Bartosz Sikorski originally used the canvas\u2019 square format to reference the computer screen\u2019s pixel as one of contemporary life\u2019s visual building blocks. This way, the canvas\u2019 silhouette became the basic level of a recursion to be continued through the canvas space\u2019s painted ciphers: there\u2019s a fractal quality to some of Sikorski\u2019s works, a visual self-referentialism used by the likes of M. C. Escher, Piet Mondrian, or in Katsushika Hokusai\u2019s Great Wave off Kanagawa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sikorski\u2019s understanding of mathematics is both visual and intuitive, and can be felt in his use of the canvas as sort of rhythm space, with compositional forms seemingly being permutated in a variety of scalings. Sikorski cares more about referencing other painting\u2019s ideas and topologies than their direct visualities, resulting in a playful approach towards the medium that will probably take the viewer by surprise when initially seeing his work. He alternates ideas between various media, translating pixelations from the canvas into pixel-art sculptures, varying the Saussureian dichotomic model of signifier\/signified up to its inversion – using the computer\u2019s pixelated abstraction as visual reference (originally used to depict objects of the three-dimensional world, pixel-art today works mostly as self-referential historicism), Sikorski creates three-dimensional abstractions of the computer\u2019s pixelated abstraction, now staged within the world: what developed out of a technical requirement has thus been canonized into a symbol for the time it was established in – like the steam locomotive or the walkman. Sikorski\u2019s work can be seen as efforts to contextualize these kinds of canonical shifts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although on first encounter Sikorski\u2019s paintings appear abstract, they are most often abstractions of something – referencing Da Vinci\u2019s Last Supper, the Tree of Life, a fleeting Malevich square. This makes them touch a narrative field unusual for these kinds of works: when applying a dualistic thought model, one seemingly encounters artists creating visual abstractions of mental concretions more often than those creating mental abstractions of visual concretions. Sikorski\u2019s paintings can be seen as art that doesn\u2019t just grow, but actually \u2018changes\u2019 depending on the recipient\u2019s level of meta-knowledge – of information that is not stored directly within the actual physical haptics of the artwork. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These semi-hidden narratives under the initial visual surface of Sikorski\u2019s paintings hold a certain irony, a specific humor that acts as both opening and closure, as both increasing and decreasing dynamic within the recipient\u2019s space. These access\/entrance variations can be especially interesting when discussing abstract pieces like his; abstraction as younger-ish art historic topos way past canonization, as a field by now similarly pre-connotated as figuration. When it used to act as a promise of avant-garde, as tool to express both \u2018unknown thought\u2019 and \u2018unthought known\u2019 (the unknown), today it might serve more as yet another coequal set of canonized ciphers used to express the known. Canonization thus reduces the Burden of the New, allowing a certain playful access towards it. Like Keith Haring then, Sikorski takes what we supposedly knew, turns it around and shows something we didn\u2019t expect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beyond Mimesis is a research and discourse platform investigating contemporary painting conditions curated by Christian Bazant-Hegemark. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond Mimesis: Bartosz Sikorski – recursions curated by Christian Bazant-Hegemark 14.10.2014 – 19.10.2014 mo.\u00eb Vienna https:\/\/beyondmimesis.tumblr.com Bartosz Sikorski originally used the canvas\u2019 square format to reference the computer screen\u2019s pixel as one of contemporary life\u2019s visual building blocks. This way, the canvas\u2019 silhouette became the basic level of a recursion to be continued through the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[41,12,36,38,11,33,34,35,40,37,32,39],"class_list":["post-373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-exhibition","tag-art","tag-bartosz-sikorski","tag-beyond-mimesis","tag-canvas","tag-exhibition","tag-mo","tag-mo-e-vienna","tag-openning","tag-painter","tag-painting","tag-recursions","tag-vienna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/suterena.com\/sikorski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/suterena.com\/sikorski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/suterena.com\/sikorski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suterena.com\/sikorski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suterena.com\/sikorski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/suterena.com\/sikorski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":382,"href":"https:\/\/suterena.com\/sikorski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions\/382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/suterena.com\/sikorski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suterena.com\/sikorski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suterena.com\/sikorski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/suterena.com\/sikorski\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/11822945_919101581470137_5052532460995181508_o.jpg\")
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