Galaxy is a refreshing col­lec­tion of new and super-​new pain­tings by Przemysław Matecki. His pain­terly cosmos con­stan­tly draws energy from the ten­sion between light and dark­ness. This is pain­ting that appears on the sur­face to be full of con­tradic­tions, the main one being the com­bination of thick paint textures with flat photographic images cut out of magazines and catalogues. 

This cosmos, like any other, seems at first to be chaos, but a deeper dive into Matecki’s pain­tings reveals their precision. This is not just about the tech­nical mastery charac­teristic of the painter’s works, but above all the con­sistency of com­position (or decom­position) and the sense of balance between various elements col­liding with each other on the sur­face of the canvas. Some of these com­positions have an almost musical structure—you can feel in them a har­monious rhythm, a pul­sing melody, and a catchy chorus that grabs the eye, as in the pain­ting with lip­sticks levitating in space.

Galaxy delivers several sur­prising solutions and themes. The artist him­self says that it is his “most per­sonal exhibition” to date, and he defines his role as a “sower of galaxies.” The charac­ter of the artist literally enters the pain­tings, appearing in the form of flat figures in a natural scale and with a distinc­tive profile, as if they were traced or projec­ted direc­tly onto the sur­face of the pain­ting. The boun­dary between life and pain­ting is ultimately blur­red here—the artist is a part of the cosmos he creates, one more galac­tic figure, an “insert” from reality. 

Levitating through abs­tract fields plan­ted with textures and specks of colour, we come across nebulae of recognizable images. These are mostly quotes cut out of art and adver­tising, but also specific, meaning­ful motifs: clocks, bodies, lips, eyes. Matecki is con­stan­tly orbiting in the cosmos of art, creating, cul­tivating, dreaming about it, and dying from it. It is an obses­sive and deeply com­mit­ted art that plays on the highest, extreme emotions. 

The sequence of vast, galac­tic canvases is accom­panied by a series of smaller-​format “por­traits.” Their only figural motif is images of human eyes pasted into the texture of the paint. The illusion created by Matecki is cap­tivating, and the gaze direc­ted at us by the images is pier­cing. That’s it. Someone is waiting for us on the other side of the canvas.