-
Andrzej Rafałowicz (Poland)
paintingModern Art Museum, Yerevan
September 21-30, 2012
Andrzej Rafalovich works in various fields of art such as painting, video art, and printmaking. The main medium that he works with is painting, an art form he finds equally intellectual and aesthetic. From many sources of inspiration, Byzantine, Russian icons, Cubism, and Pop Art are the most influential for his creative practice.
One of the most common subjects of his work includes ordinary items cut out from their original contexts and transposed into symbolic space through painterly means. This is an idea taken from the Byzantine sacred painting, based on Plato’s philosophy; the picture becomes a window into a different, mysterious reality, ruled by unrecognized rules, yet somehow possible to recognize on the level of intuition. To emphasize the symbolic nature of the depicted items, the artist often uses numbers and letters which exist in his paintings on the same metaphorical level. The figures are completely accidental, or rather; he chooses them based on intuition. Each of the subjects, even though inspired by experiences of his private environment, becomes here a certain idea. The way of treating the painted subjects in a few cases evolve into almost complete abstract representation, with only slight allusion to the reality.
The other strong source of his inspiration is a language of visual communication: warning signs, information signs etc. A. Rafalovich often experiments with diverse materials–for example, a series of collages using empty drug packets. Here, it was the medium–a common waste that first gave the context for the series, placing it strictly in a kind of post Pop-art arena. This series is an ironic comment on the certain issues of the global hyper-consumerist culture; a culture which creates an illusion of happiness, within arm’s reach, but instead abuses the ways of improving the quality of lives, leading itself to slow self-destruction. He has used similar ideas in other works, creating series of paintings with more obvious Pop-art and Dadaist references.
Andrzej Rafałowicz is a Polish artist working in various fields of art such as painting, video art, and printmaking. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw (Poland) with a major in Painting. Rafalovich teaches painting at the same academy.
The series of paintings ‘Come and See it Yourself’ was created during the artist’s 2-month stay at the ‘Art Commune’ International AIR program. The exhibition was organized by ACSL with kind support of the Modern Art Museum in Yerevan.