“Fragment with Landscape” is part of a group of works wherein Wawrzyniak departs from the classic, rectangular canvas format, experimenting instead with freer shapes. Here, very fine cotton fabric is stretched on a trapezoidal wooden frame; sparse charcoal marks are drawn on the picture space. The few, dark horizontal lines against the white primed surface evoke a vague impression of a landscape, an island, floating in uncannily empty space. At the same time, the irregular form of the canvas battles the skewed perpendicularity of the hanging, confounding one’s conventional way of seeing. An irresolvable dilemma challenges the eye.
Jan Wawrzyniak (*1971, Leipzig, Germany; now in Berlin)
Works by Jan Wawrzyniak revolve around questions of perception and spatial conditionalities. Whether as video installations or charcoal drawings on primed cotton fabric or on MDF panels, all works are monochromatic and investigate the expressive possibilities of the purest elements of drawing. Spatiality and surface become obscured, denying easy legibility. Numerous grants have enabled him to take his work further, including the stipend from the State of Saxony-Anhalt (2006), and in 2011, Wawrzyniak was awarded the Will-Grohmann-Prize.
