Kukje Gallery is pleased to present a three-person exhibition featuring new paintings by Slawomir Elsner, Martin Mannig and Joanna M. Wezyk. All three artists hail from Eastern Europe and are a part of the generation that lived through the Cold War and its ensuing fallout. Though their paintings depict drastically different subject matter, they share a unique sensitivity to cultural idiosyncrasies and a nostalgia for simpler times.
Mannig reinterprets familiar characters taken from German and northern European fairy tales and legends and the early Hollywood popular culture. The characters in Martin Mannig’s works such as “Mickey Mouse” are familiar to the public and yet they seem uncanny by the effect of horror, disgust and perversion they create. The lovable image of the fairy is both the source of evil and of disease. Characters that evoke sympathy appear in Mannig’s works as violent and sexual creatures which unsettle the viewers. By reinterpreting the familiar characters, Mannig tries to reveal the bizarre nature of the popular images.
Slawomir Elsner projects his memories of childhood fairy tales onto his works. The characters in Hans Christian Andersen’s tales appear on the walls of old buildings through free association and the erosion of paint on the walls creates figurative narratives by fortuity. Elsner presents in his painting the political and cultural changes that have occurred in the post Cold War period, by portraying the homeless and also showcases the cultural phenomenon of the so-called “self-camera” in the internet age.
While in the past Wezyk’s works have dealt with the reclaiming and reconstruction of abandoned church interiors in her native Poland, her most recent paintings depict now-empty bedchambers in castles throughout Europe. These luminal rooms were once intensely private spaces where royalty loved, fought and made important decisions. But now, they have been converted into museums and are on continual public display. Wezyk’s sensitive use of light and mastery of chiaroscuro serves to underscore the intersection of private and public, past and present in these locations. They are at once imbued with a sense of nostalgia and foreboding, creating pictures that compress the psychological, political and religious.
Slawomir Elsner was born in 1976 in Poland and has held various exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States. His works can be found in the collection of the Berlin Contemporary Museum. This exhibition marks the second show at Kukje Gallery. Martin Mannig was born in 1974 in Freiberg, Germany and graduated from Dresden Academy of Art. He was awarded the Caspar David Friedrich Prize in 2004. Joanna M. Wezyk was born in Poland and studied at the Akademia Sztuk Pieknych in Krakow. She emigrated to the United States in 1990, where she continued to develop her artistic career. Wezyk received her MFA from The School of Visual Arts, New York in 2008 and was awarded the Paual Rhodes Memorial Award for Exception Achievement in Fine Art upon graduation. Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions worldwide and most recently, she had a solo exhibition at Tina Kim Gallery, New York.
