Marc Selwyn Fine Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Andrzej Zielinski, opening Friday, June 3 through July 16.
In today’s world much emphasis is placed on being computer literate, and much has been made of the impact of digital technology on traditional modes of art making. Andrzej Zielinski’s paintings of laptops and ATMs disregard such concerns.
The artist pays no attention to the intent or function of the laptop computers and ATMs that are the subjects of his paintings. He lovingly crafts machines that exist in a world of their own, with thickly applied, confectionary paint, unexpected color combinations, and eccentric distortions. His compositions have the effect of destabilizing the viewer, and allow each of the machines to hum in their own useless singularity.
The life-size ATMs are painted in a shorthand style using large brush strokes with passages of the painting rendered in impasto that borders on the sculptural realm of the third dimension. The brush strokes create glare that allows the ATMs to snap and in and out of the illusion of three dimensionality. This gives normally static machines a sense of exuberant dynamism.
In both the laptop and ATM pieces Zielinski has combined the technology of the twenty-first century with a highly individual and powerful style that forces the contemporary viewer to focus on the dichotomy between the digital and the hand crafted. In the tradition of figures such as Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, Konrad Klapheck, and Peter Cain, Zielinski explores the relationship between man and machine that has fascinated artists throughout the twentieth century. His work is a return to the traditional methods of art making, but is anything but conventional.
Zielinski received his bachelor’s degree in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002, and his master’s in painting from Yale University in 2004. Since his recent graduation he has shown in important galleries such as Nicole Klagsbrun in New York, and he is currently featured in the Greater York exhibition at PS1 MoMA. Zielinski first showed at Marc Selwyn Fine Art in a group show curated by Clarissa Dalrymple earlier this year.