Looking at Andrzej Zielinski's paintings of telephones, laptops, ATMs, shredders and other electronic equipment over the last 5 years, his work has troubled and haunted me. Discussing matters with him, I am informed that each object is painted at a 1:1 ratio; the objects are indeed actual products. Seeing these fanciful figurations and trying to find paths inward to their greater significance, I recalled looking at Jasper Johns paintings and realizing that his numbers were less a source of contemplation, but an essential readymade. In the age of Modern Art and Abstraction, a bewildered audience began to struggle with the seemingly obvious question of, "What is it?" Johns gently nudged the question to a more suitable "Why?" thus releasing the image from further duty of replication of representation. Anecdotal or fictional, this imagination of an artist standing before a blank canvas and wondering what to paint is erased.

This prefigured composition left the John's the freedom of how to paint. Whereas John's forgoes compositional variation, Andrzej arrangement outside of 1:1 ratio, are anything but predetermined. What results is a highly personal trnaslation of a machine where reality is brought into question by distortion of actual and perceived space. This destabilizes, distorts and highlights our dependence on machines that are constantly changing in terms of their tangible and intangible functions and attributes. Andrzej's comical and strange application of paint functions with machine economy to allow each brush / palette knife stroke of his to have a quadruple life as description, suggestion, abstraction and bas-relief. Andrzej's use of 21st century acrylics, gels and mediums answers the challenge head-on of how to "up-date" painting and bring into the 21st century with striking relevance.

The phones on display at Motus Fort exhibit a wide range of technical strategies from application to coloration. Reverse engineering Albers' color theories, some of these phones have protruding surfaces that from a short distance read flat. This current exhibition at Motus Fort exhibits work from the last few years so we can witness the artist's development and furthering of paint plus surface. Seen as a metaphor the subject can be also read as the classic struggle between style and content. Taking the use of Alexander Graham Bell's first telephone in 1876, its overall use has remained constant, yet styles and improvements are ongoing.

Andrzej Zielinski was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1976. He completed his BFA at The School of Chicago in 2002 and achieved his MFA in painting from Yale in 2004. His work has been in numerous group shows including Greater New York at PS I MOMA. He has had solo shows at prestigious galleries including Nicole Klagsbrun and DCKT contemporary in New York and Marc Selwyn Fine Art in Los Angeles. He currently lives and works in New York.