TOMASZ KRĘCICKI

When we look at Kręcicki’s paintings we first see a depiction of a familiar object or activity. Little by little we begin to realise the works let us hear the noise characteristic of the depicted action. All the paintings in the exhibition have this multisensory quality and their relationship to sound tells the story of Gentle Spin. Bubbles and Good morning, for example, evoke the characteristic sounds of the depicted actions typically found in the morning: the fizz of a dissolving tablet and the chink of an egg cracking against metal. Two paintings of oversized washing machines, 3000 and 100°, depict the appliances dancing above the floor as if in mid-motion, and make the rattling of a washing machine palpable, even letting us feel their vibrations. The works depicting a slippered foot in the dark or the paintings of earplugs are equally related to sound: they allude to a longing for quiet, the desire to keep out unwanted noises. As such, the still lives of earplugs combine personal experiences—the artist has had bouts of insomnia—with Kręcicki’s interest in art history, in particular the work of Paul Cézanne and Giorgio Morandi.

Hanging and Silence now, reiterate the synesthetic aspect of Kręcicki’s painted world and also raise its stakes. The delicate fault lines drawn in the yellow surfaces surrounding the nail or the tip of the drill allow us not only to hear the noise, but also intuit the anxious anticipation of greater disaster. Perhaps the story of Gentle Spin is not just about an insomniac’s sensitivity to sound? The cracks suggest that he may have been right and that his world is indeed falling apart.

The title Gentle Spin, then, characteristically for Kręcicki, refers both to the associations of the current exhibition—the gentler cycle or spin of washing machines—and to much broader and more profound conditions: it is not just the endless cycle of information, the ‘news cycle’ or ‘spin of information,’ or the relentless crises in which the world is awash, but also the very rotation of the planet itself, which is the one thing that makes all of our existence, such as it is, possible.