The acclaimed art critic, Anda Rottenberg, writes in her text for the exhibition: “He painted “ugly”, like the whole Gruppa and, like Andrzej Wróblewski, a few decades earlier, who decided that final things could not be painted nicely. (...) Nice painting is easier. And, of course, better assimilated by the audience. But is it necessary for an artist who wants to annoy the viewer? The most recent exhibition of Paweł Kowalewski's paintings has a distinctive poetic title for the artist “Objects designed to stimulate the life of the mind, i.e. the invisible eye of the soul”. His art has always had to scream. At the heart of Kowalewski's painting is opposition and disagreement with the surrounding reality, and these objects were created as a precaution — they are meant to arouse anxiety in us, prompting us to reflect. Paweł Kowalewski's latest paintings are a natural continuation of his thinking about art, they are nonchalant, expressive, have a poster character and contain simple observations on serious topics that the artist captures in symbolic color. Their hidden meanings reveal the titles: “Fides against Intellectus” — a brain pierced by an arrow, on a bright pink background, or a painterly story about the fact that reason has gone bankrupt, “British tears”, in which bloody Africa is imprinted, reflections on color, neocolonialism and totalitarian systems, and “Happiness”, which is naive. an ironic cloud on a blue background. Paweł Kowalewski closed the works in three cycles: “Hannah Arendt”, “African Dreams” and “Solitude”. “This kind of divergence between the appearance and the meaning of the painting and the bitter irony that emerges from this divergence is an echo of youth, and thus grows into a constitutive feature of Kowalewski's work. And it can be rooted in his youthful experience of growing up in the poverty of the PRL and solidifying in the oppression of martial law,” Rottenberg explains in his text. Art is liberating. Art purifies and probably that's why Kowalewski never stopped painting. His cassandric nature constantly sees signs and symbols around him, which the creator takes out of context and then places in the paintings. He feverishly framed his canvases in decorated frames in order to emphasize, knock out of reality what he observed. His poetic, written images become living OBJECTS, with their own body and soul. They are independent, they follow their strangeness and scream... As Paweł Kowalewski says: “Real art must be rebellious!” The exhibition “Objects designed to stimulate the life of the mind, or the invisible eye of the soul” will open on May 28, Friday at 6:30pm at the WINDA Contemporary Art Gallery in Kielce. The gallery, which was established in 2004, exhibited works by, among others, Wojciech Fangor, Stanisław Fijałkowski, Jerzy Nowosielski and Magdalena Abakanowicz. Event on FB www.galeriawinda.pl Patron of the exhibition: Group One