THIS IS NOT ANOTHERHENRYK GALLERYcurator: Alesander Celusta19.11–10.12.2016, Krakow, Poland / solo exhibition
This isn’t just your typical formalistic production from some random set of geographical coordinates. Or maybe it is?
In a film review about “A Pure Formality” one user of an online film database writes: Films are made in order be watched – that much is certain! But can every film be watched by just anyone? Theoretically, yes. Thus, one might ask if all art is created in order looked at? And, can all art be looked at by just anyone?
Addressing the question of artistic formalism is interrelated with form, which in itself constitutes a decisive factor of values, such as those cognitive or aesthetic. Kolerski works mainly in painting, drawing, and object, willingly blurring the boundaries between them. His works are often confined to a narrow palette and are generally devoid of elements creating a narrative. The abstract aesthetic is captured in a minimalistic convention. Through a reduction of painting form, Kolerski underlines the tangibility of the work, for as he himself states: this stems from a fear of getting entangled in subjects that I feel no connection to, or of saying something redundant.
This gesture of apparent destruction – or even this act of creating a situation of transience or impermanence – is, for Kolerski, merely a pretext for developing something new. As the artist himself says: I orbit around certain impulses – impulses that then generate images. What’s really fascinating is their ephemeral nature. Such an impulse can be so short, that an image doesn’t manage to properly depict it, thereby rendering it begun yet unfinished, yellowed and cracked.
Formalism is no longer a marginal phenomenon. But where exactly is it heading?
In the context of Adrian’s exhibition, what’s especially interesting to me is the subject of recurring questions about what can be done for painting itself. Thus, isn’t it worth asking: what do you do for the painting? In such a context, the exhibition “This is Not Another” seems to ask how to critically reflect on a painting. Do we need formalistic art? What is the significance of this manner of thinking today?
