RAFAŁ TOPOLEWSKI

To construct or re-construct pictures, Topolewski draws on his archive of personal photographs as well as images found in books and on the internet. This source material is cut up, manipulated and merged in preparatory digital collages, which serve as a point of departure. Once a painting is begun, however, it is pursued on its own terms and can transform, through the activity of painting, into something unexpected. Although second-hand images often play a crucial part in the process of creation, Topolewski is primarily concerned with interrogating his own psychological space, and the intimate scale of the works reinforces the suggestion of a private individual space. The subjects belong, after all, to a personal repository of images and forms.

The works, like memories, seem to occupy an in-between space. For Topolewski, the idea of materialising a moment of suspension between one state and another is central, not only to the way something is depicted or contained within the surface of a painting, but to the uncertainties from which the work emerges. It describes the task that most profoundly shapes the artist’s work: that of making tangible and picking at the seams between consciousness and unconsciousness, clarity and confusion, meaning and meaninglessness.

About the artist

Rafal Topolewski (b. 1983, Grudziądz, PL) lives and works in Lisbon (PT). He studied Fine Art at the Royal Academy Schools in London (UK) and at the Manchester Metropolitan University (UK). Solo and group exhibitions include: Interludes, Alice Amati Gallery, London (UK) in 2023; The Belly and the Guts, Alice Amati Gallery, London (UK) in 2023; In Three Acts, Huxley-Parlour, London (UK) in 2023; Becoming a Creature, Tabula Rasa Gallery, London (UK) in 2023; Castelet, Simo Bacar, Lisbon (PT) in 2022; Corpo e Mente, curated by Lawrence Van Hagen, Palazzo Barbaro, Venice (IT) in 2022; If not, Winter, Simo Bacar, Lisbon (PT) in 2022, Nudes and Dudes, Lundgren Gallery, Mallorca (ES) in 2020; Isle, Smart Objects Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (US) in 2018; Fully Awake, Blip Blip Blip, Leeds (UK) in 2017; Royal Academy Show, Royal Academy Schools, London (UK) in 2016 and Premiums, Royal Academy of Arts, London (UK) in 2015.