The latest works of Jakub Czyszczoń are infused with a spirit of a peculiar ecology—newspaper sheets, dry leaves, and fragments of clothing are fused together by the artist using oil paint, forming distinctive compositions. Two untitled pieces in the current exhibition, encased in wall-mounted display cases, evoke the image of radioactive puddles or artefacts from a museum yet to be built. The choice of materials is both unexpected and deliberate, revealing, upon closer inspection, the artist’s fundamental method. Its essence lies in a game of concealment and revelation. Czyszczoń is not driven by an analytical intent, but rather by an intuitive approach—observing details from a distance and within the broader context.
The dominant colour in the exhibition—vermilion—is charged with a certain ambivalence. It is akin to life-giving red, yet almost toxically vivid. The large-scale Untitled painting (2023-24) consists of fabric cuttings affixed to the canvas—excess material that shapes the texture of the work. The resulting image is a drawing of distortions, resembling a topographic map, an enlarged fragment of skin, or an MRI scan. Czyszczoń is drawn to the kinship between phenomena precisely where deviations and protrusions emerge. A fitting example is a smaller work on board (Untitled, 2023-24), where an earthy red-brown canvas wraps around a plant stem like a bandage on a broken bone.
Foliage simultaneously obscures the structure of a tree while defining its shape; clothing insulates the body yet does not conceal the human silhouette. The infosphere operates in much the same way, enveloping the world in an opaque layer of text. Is there anything that ages faster than today’s newspaper? Czyszczoń collects material traces of broadly understood life processes to reveal their essential unity—their ceaseless transformation.
