Something Strange Is Happening to My Lawn: here is the exhibition’s title, which is an observation and a confession. Observation, because the painter looks, calculates, recreates and by this he places himself outside. A confession, because he is not afraid to look critically at the lawn which he considers his own and with which he identifies. This is me and my lawn, he says, self-mockingly. This is my world, which is being processed by me before your eyes. The process of creating, integrating the inner and outer artistic views, is cool and emotional. Artistic gardening play has a personal, as well as global, tragicomic dimension. The paradox follows the paradox, laughter echoes across the abyss. Series of paintings by Piestrak forms a story about the present, which we can follow by looking carefully, not only at the painting, but also at what is around it. (…)
Piestrak seems to be saying that the danger is in the air, that there will soon be an opportunity to get to know it. That perhaps for some it has already happened. In the painter’s story, man ignores nature, which demands itself more and more bluntly. He seems to be forgetting that his lawn is not just a square of green, that it does not hang in a vacuum, but has been and will always be part of the world. He does not understand that he cannot cover his ground with green strips once and for all, as with insulating tape; he cannot irrevocably possess his own lawn, for even he is not entirely his. The best he can do is place snowmen on it, or stuff useless decorations, waiting for something strange to happen which he would not be able to control anymore.

Mateusz Piestrak (born in 1991 in Wrocław) – painter, a graduate of the University of Arts in Poznań. In 2016, he graduated from the Faculty of Painting and Drawing, in the studio of Professor Włodzimierz Dudkowiak. He has presented his works at several solo exhibitions and over a dozen group exhibitions, at home and abroad. Lives and works in Poznań.

curator: Karolina Leśnik-Patelczyk

11.05.2021 – 13.06.2021
20 Gdańska St.

There will be no vernissage, but on the first day of the exhibition – from 3 pm to 6 pm – you will be able to meet the artist and talk about the exhibition and his work.