tab ur etes 2021

Editor: We're looking at Lech Jankowski's mixed-media piece from 2021, titled "tab ur etes". It features a kind of boxy landscape with curious stool-like shapes floating inside. It’s very textural; what catches your eye about it? Curator: The impasto application of acrylic paint is really striking here. Look at the build-up of material; it creates not just color, but also its own topography. I wonder about Jankowski’s process: was this texture built up intentionally, layer by layer? Editor: It looks like it. Why is the process important to your interpretation? Curator: Well, the physicality of the work challenges traditional notions of painting as solely an illusionistic medium. It’s foregrounding labor, the act of applying paint, making it almost sculptural. Does the framing add to the sculptural feel, do you think? Editor: Definitely! It looks less like a window onto a scene and more like a constructed object in itself. It also creates the feeling of a contained, almost manufactured, environment for these stools. Curator: Exactly! Are those "stools" handmade objects? It makes you question mass production and consider what labor has gone into this piece’s creation and that of these symbolic objects.. Editor: I didn’t think of it that way. I guess the abstract setting also prevents us from simply seeing "stools". They become something else through the mixed-media elements and construction of the setting, not necessarily something functional, perhaps something more representational. Curator: Yes, the artist manipulates our perspective. It gives you an insight into how consumption shapes our experience of functional items. Editor: I've gained an expanded sense of how artistic choices highlight not just visual appeal but the physical aspects and making of an artwork. Thanks! Curator: Likewise; considering materiality brings new understanding and I hope others find the same in appreciating the artwork.