Bujnowski's paintings often feature isolated objects highlighted against a uniform background, which was the case with Chocolate (2004) and 2003's Paintings-Trophies series of antlers and hunting trophies, an ironic reference to the colloquial Polish term for "cuckold." Prehistoric Tools (2004) was a series of twenty small-format pictures painted with thickly applied paint. Another frequent motif in Bujnowski's work is simplified, virtually schematic landscapes, such as the ones in the series Snow (2002–2004) and Clouds (2004). In Graboszyce (2002), the name of the artist's home town, he tackled the subject of detached houses, removed from any context and painted with no background at all.
Bujnowski eventually began using his paintings to reach for a reality accessible only via technology. The series Satellite features blurry black-and-white abstract "photos" of outer space, and in USG he painted scans of the human body, as they are seen on a USG monitor in a doctor's office.
Several of the artist's projects combined painting with video (such as Flowers or Nails, both 2005). Film played a particularly important role in the series Dusk (2004), in which black-and-white landscapes were gradually covered with black paint. The process of the transformation of a scene into black monochrome – night falling – was recorded on video as well.
Bujnowski used his own self-portrait as the starting point for a large-scale project called Visa Portrait (2004), in which he photographed the painting and attached it to his US visa application in place of an actual photo. He was granted the visa, and while in the US he attended a flying course. Thus he not only returned to his theme of originals vs. copies, making it impossible to say which came first, but also joined the debate on the fear of terrorism by showing how easy it was to circumvent security procedures.
The artist did away entirely with the concept of uniqueness with the project Last Saved (2004), for which he hired a craftsman to produce eight copies of a whatnot shelf from Pope John Paul II's family home on display in his museum in Wadowice. By appropriating this ordinary piece of furniture and turning it into a cult object, he reversed the usual museum process of turning everyday items into curiosities.
In 2006, Bujnowski contacted various political parties and organisations and offered to paint banners for them, irrespective of which political option they represented. Contrary to his expectations, only left-wing organisations responded. After being used in actual street marches, the banners were then shown in a gallery exhibition. Once again, the artist was returning to the idea of painting's usefulness, this time by giving it a role in political activism.
Author: Karol Sienkiewicz, December 2006.