PAINTING

ESSENTIA

“How do we really see each other?

This work portrays the essence of the sitters. It reflects how we really perceive people we know, not as the frozen, high-detail “replicas” of photography or traditional portraits, which capture only the instant of that person, but the living, moving forms that we really perceive: blurred in motion and complex in the way that real people’s characters and personalities are complex, only revealing themselves slowly over time. ”  — Mark Dziewulski

Mark Dziewulski is one of the few international artists invited to exhibit at both the Art and Architecture Biennales in Venice. Showing his work this year is the GAA Foundation, a Dutch organization that aims to heighten the awareness of the more philosophical themes in contemporary art. From May 11th to November 26th 2017, Dziewulski’s Selfies series are presented in the main room in Palazzo Mora. 

Using graphite and paint to dissect selfies of friends, family, strangers and himself, Mark Dziewulski dances between the worlds of figurative and abstraction, searching for the elusive essence of his subjects. His painted digitals break down the visual references of faces, testing just how far interference can go before complete recognition is lost.

The urge to record ourselves is one of the most fundamental drivers of creative culture, and portrait painting is one of the most prevalent genres throughout history. Until recently, only the rich could afford to commission portraits. But with the advent of photography (and especially now with the omnipresent cell phone), portraiture has become so democratized that everyone has the ability to instantly create his or her own portrait. Enter the “Selfie”.

“Photographic portraits depict an instant, but what if you need to show more? How do you really portray somebody? How do you capture their life-force? Their passion? Their ever-changing motions and emotions? Their memories?”

These are the questions that first arose for Dziewulski when his mother began grappling with Alzheimer’s. “She couldn’t sit still. Both her movements and her personality were a blur. She wasn’t a crisp photograph. She was a complex, dynamic character. With paint you have this amazing flexibility to show so much more than a single moment. You have the ability to incorporate into the still image the extra dimensions of time and memory.” This fascination with movement and time have driven and informed all of Dziewulski’s work.