Matter I, 2024

Artist about the painting: "Standing face to face with the mountain, I do not focus on the whole, panoramic view of the mountain, instead I look at a fragment of its tissue through the eyes of a climber, entering into physical contact with a certain tangible fragment of it - through direct contact with the rocks, relying on their stability, using cracks and cavities, balancing somewhere between the summit and the void. The mountain as a path is built of many overlapping layers. Hence, my paintings are multi-layered, both in the material and metaphysical sense. Although climbing usually has a chosen goal - the summit, revealing some view, it is the path - the unconscious scanning of rocks, structures and matter that actually constitutes the encounter with the mountain. When painting the "Mountain Matter" series, I mostly chose fragments of the mountain landscape, devoid of its relation to the horizontal plane and the sky. My mountain segments are however large enough to resonate with the monumentality of the mountains experienced in direct contact with them."

This large-format painting belongs to the "Mountain Matter" series, a body of work produced for the artist's diploma thesis at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow.

The works are informed by the artist's personal experiences and emotional responses to the mountains, drawing parallels between the climber's mindset and the creative process. By engaging with concepts such as matter, expression, perception, and the creative act, the artist seeks to offer a novel interpretation of the mountains and the ineffable qualities of both climbing and artistic creation.