Living room with a Piano 

Curator: Looking at Zaniewski's painting, “Living room with a Piano,” what strikes me most is this pervading sense of, I don't know, quiet expectancy? Editor: Quiet expectancy? It looks like a room waiting to be filled with people, with sound. Like the moment before the music starts. I find it slightly melancholic. It makes me think about those late evenings just before you switch off all of the lights and head to bed. The warmth from the lamp, the shadows lengthening… It's rather intimate, isn't it? Curator: Intimate, yes. These ruddy browns and yellows make me consider domesticity. What's interesting here is the tension between the everyday scene and the techniques. Zaniewski has clearly put much impasto and acrylic onto the painting. It creates a textured surface that demands attention. How might we think of the rise in popularity of musical salons and parlors in the 19th Century given these spaces allowed new interactions between class and gender? Editor: Salons of the time… the painting style pushes me towards a very raw emotional space, quite separate from formal social gatherings. This neo-expressionist leaning feels almost like a diary entry, a fragmented memory. I feel it even in that blue rectangle indicating a window—it almost cuts across the warmth of the space. Do you feel the window adds another perspective in an intimate painting of interiors? Curator: It does add another perspective. But given this neo-expressionist lens that you introduced, could it suggest freedom, perhaps a space for alternative perspectives and the chance of new critical discourse at the end of the 20th century? Editor: That tension of freedom from domestic space really resonates, especially thinking of the stark geometry. Curator: And that, perhaps, brings a critical edge to the otherwise quiet interior, one in which even the piano seems to wait, quietly. Editor: Waiting... Yes, waiting for the story to unfold. Makes me feel nostalgic, thinking about how our domestic spaces hold and reflect who we are and how we act. Curator: And how art helps us see that reflected story more clearly. Editor: Absolutely. It’s the resonance in the details.