Jarek Puczel | Inside & Beyond

Born in 1965 in Poland, Puczel graduated from the University of Warsaw and gained his artistic experience as a filmmaker, graphic designer and painter. He views his style as emotional, but calming, reduced in shape and color. Building stories, but pointing at illusion and unveiling the materiality of paints.Showing the individuals, but talking about a common human experience. There is also something deeply "Eastern European"in his style. You can even feel the heritage of painting icons:human figures are reduced in details to their main psychological features, and depicted mainly on a flat backgrounds. An echo of the notion, that outside world doesn't matter. Paradoxically, such an old-time “iconic heritage” can be regarded as a progressive conceptual basis. "By the way, the outside world really doesn't exist, as quantum physics teaches us." In his "Lovers" series he focuses on deeply hidden, intimate connections between couples. These two people create the deepest field of emotional experiences, the strongest tensions, field of learning through love and pain. But of course, you can't see anything unless you are inside as a intimate participant. The outside viewer sees nothing, so we are "censored or protected". The paint reveals and covers at the same time. The surface gets wavy, subjected to an alternating rhythm of disturbances, tensions and calms. And we are forcing to read between the lines, to dive into this situation with our interpretation, our own emotions in the mirror of the painting. 

"Every object in my work refers to something bigger, that defines or expresses it. I try to convey the idea of the multidimensional presence, which is a carrier of meanings. However I'm aware that realistic painting form easily entangles objects in the game of comparisons and associations. It can be seductive, and also misleading.In order to avoid identification with the specific singularity of depiction, I reduce painting form, trying to express an ‘intimate anonymity’, so that viewers can reflect their own emotions and thoughts in my work. Such interactivity and openness is important to me. I try to find the state of balance between the sensuality of the message and the transparency of the ideas that should be revealed." 
-Jarek Puczel