The most important aspect of Kokosiński’s practices is intermedia: connecting classic paintings with objects already created or objects found, that combined emphasize the material or even the processual side of works of art. Most of Kokosiński’s paintings have a classical form – painted with paint on canvas stretched on wooden frames. In his cycles, Kokosiński refers to classical motives, such as landscapes, still life, battle scenes and religious paintings. However, there is no traditionally understood pictorialness as the illusion has been exchanged with particular elements of material reality.
Already during his studies the artist created the cycle The Illnesses of Painting (2007) that juxtaposes portraits of people with skin diseases before and during their sickness. Blisters and pimples are also visible on the front of badly installed canvas – like the sickness has touched the paintings as well – the paint is exfoliating whereas the wooden frames are contorted. His next series were Twisted Life (2007-2008), which shows car accidents painted on bulging frames, Skins (2010) and finally the most recognizable of his pieces: Paintings Devouring Reality (2011).
Paintings Devouring Reality are canvases that blur boundaries between traditionally understood painting and objects. The latter is close to the inside, absorbing various objects that possess their own stories taken from someone else’s history and reality and from a different context.
The first painting of the series was originally started in 2010, but Kokosiński was disappointed with the result and decided to destroy it. The burning canvas was an act of aggression but also an outcome of genuine helplessness that he could not find a satisfactory relation with painting. It was also a purifying gesture that had the potential for transmutation. The artist came back to the burning thread in 2012 with the cycle Burnt Photographs, this time treating fire symbolically and painting its effects on canvas.
Author: Ewa Gorządek, February 2016, translated by Antoni Wiśniewski
Selected individual exhibitions:
2016 Dysfunctional Matter, Knoll Galerie Wien, Vienna
2015 Nothing is Real, Everything is Possible, Water Tower Gallery, Konin
- Vapours, ABC Gallery, Poznań
2014 Crack, KnollGalerieWien, Wiedeń, Austria
2013 Kinky Dropping Thoughts (Thomas Bernhard), Galeria Promocyjna, Warsaw
- Bilder fressen Wirklichkeit, Club der Polnischen Versager, Berlin
- Fever, ABC Gallery, Poznań
2012 Uncontrolled Content, Młode Forum Sztuki, Lublin
- (Dis)order of things, Bunkier Sztuki, Kraków
2011 Some Pictures Don't Want to be Painted, BWA Contemporary Art Gallery, Katowice
2011 (NO) BODY (NO) SOUL (NO) ART, Small Gallery, Słupsk
2010 In Shape, Sztygarka City Museum, Dąbrowa Górnicza
2010 For the Beginning - the End, Nova Gallery, Kraków
2007 Shame of Repetition, Nova Gallery, Kraków