Selfportrait 

Iwo Zaniewski made this Selfportrait with pastel on paper. The composition strikes us with its interplay of light pastel colours and simplified forms, creating an intimate yet unsettling viewing experience. The artist uses soft lines and a muted palette to define the figures and interior space, evoking a dreamlike quality. Here we see Zaniewski depicting himself attending to a woman, likely a model, set against a backdrop of domestic interiors. The use of colour blocks, such as the blue highlight on the artist's figure and the red chair, draws our eyes across the surface of the picture plane, while the spiral staircase adds a sense of depth and dynamism to the composition. The flatness of the rendering flattens pictorial space, which can be read as a kind of structuralist commentary on representation itself. The artwork's charm lies in its gentle subversion of traditional portraiture, inviting us to question the nature of identity and representation. The composition and the artist's colour and mark making challenge fixed meanings about space, perception, and representation. Art is not static but is continuously re-evaluated, offering space for diverse interpretations.