23M2022 Painting

Born in 1990 in Kolbuszowa, Poland. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Faculty of painting in Kraków, completing his dissertation work under professor Adam Wsiołkowski (2015). The first paintings entitled “Museum” were made in 2014 and inspired by the interiors of the Vienna museums where tradition mixes with modernity giving the exhibited works a completely different context. The distinctness of those spaces and how the works and people functioned there has in time become a subject/pretext for further pursuits, both formal and ideological. With each work, the meaning of the man on the painting, the painting inside the painting, the light on the painting and the architecture itself evolved. Initially, the works presented the museum as the so-called white cube treated in a literal, architectonic way, with defined sources of light, white walls and straight angles, centrally placed, undefined and unspecified paintings and unspecified human. Such takes provoke questions: about the role of the institution, the power of its space and myth, which decides what is art and what isn’t, it also provokes a question about the recipient himself, recipient who seems to be lost in the labyrinth of paintings just as he is drifting in the world of art. Later works show flawless painting skills and technique, white walls change into a perfect gradation of color. Only the intensity helps us to get a grasp of the space and the system thereof. It is illusory and non-material. The light is more important than ever, it is not just a skylight or halogen in a museum anymore, instead, it becomes an unspecified source of illumination that outlines the whole presentation. With time, paintings are slowly giving way to people who transform from black, impersonal shadows to real figures. With the help of dematerialized space, they are devoid of any point of reference and remain suspended and unsure. Fragmentary nature of depictions on Maliborski’s paintings brings to one’s mind Edward Hopper’s paintings, where the scenes capturing everyday life do so by embracing a deep black and vague light, creating a non-material void. Also, the way of presenting is similar - the viewer becomes a voyeur who is only peeping at the situation he came upon.