20 September 2024

Exhibition "The Failure of Reason" by Paweł Kowalewski at Mazowieckie Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Elektrownia in Radom

Join us on 20 September at 6 PM at the Mazowieckie Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Elektrownia in Radom for the opening of Paweł Kowalewski's exhibition The Failure of Reason, featuring works the artist made over the past seven years — not only paintings, but also sculptures, installations and works made using photography. Kowalewski's output spans many genres — painting on canvas and on paper, photography, sculpture, NFTs, installations and ready-mades. Characteristic of his style are the conceptual-Dadaist commentaries and titles the artist has attached to his works from the very start of his career. In his art, every piece carries deep meaning — a commentary on reality, a reference to a literary text, to personal life, or to the pages of history. The artist keeps a watchful eye on the absurdities and dangers of contemporary reality, unafraid to ask difficult questions through his art. The exhibition presents paintings made between 2019 and 2024, including the extensive series Objects, in which the artist provocatively declares that his canvases are not paintings but objects, and ostentatiously sets them into decorative frames whose style is far removed from those usually seen at contemporary art shows today. The Elektrownia will also show other works by the artist that resist easy categorisation. The piece that inspired the exhibition's title is the installation The Contempt of Reason — a brain, levitating in space, made of sterling silver and studded with sapphires. The artist asks: do we, as a contemporary society, hold reason in contempt? Has the age of reason given way to an age of applause? The show also includes the newest paintings and installations, none of which have been shown anywhere before. "Kowalewski philosophises on canvas, quotes thinkers and often jokes — he has always been an artist with a sharp sense of wit — but it is a dark humour. The artist's contemporary paintings are not as saturated with anger as his canvases from the 1980s. The painter is richer by several decades of experience, countless journeys, readings. In the 1980s he looked at reality from a perspective isolated from the world, in a communist Poland that seemed a separate universe. Today his gaze is global." (Stach Szabłowski) "Kowalewski's art is a kind of dialogue with reality, in which any artistic method is valid as long as it helps in facing the most important matters head-on." (Aleksander Hudzik) The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue featuring all the reproductions, the artist's own commentary on the works, and texts by respected art historians and writers on art: Anda Rottenberg, Waldemar Baraniewski, Aleksander Hudzik, and Stach Szabłowski.