Stars 23 August 23:53 Print

Robert Motelski paints unusual pictures on the verge between abstraction and landscape. Observation of nature is combined there with the artistic quest for ways to escape the literal. His paintings neither focus solely on what emerges from the landscape within the field of view, in defiance of the titles: ‘Mountains’, ‘Island’, ‘Clouds’, ‘Trees’. Nor they stop at capturing the moment and passing impressions, although the artist times down his works with precision almost to the minute. Whilst looking, the spectator has a sense of continuum, or the essential infinity of time and open space. Their minimalistic form deletes irrelevant details and draws attention to the hidden laws of nature and the order of the universe, which surprises at times, but also encourages their discovery. The artist does not limit himself to the common artistic ventures in the open air; each cycle is a great voyage, inspiring for both the painter and the spectator, liberating from today’s ubiquitous hustle and bustle and restoring our lost sense of harmony. The artist starts the third album with his latest works whose subject is light. ’Light and shadow engage me most at the moment’, he explains. ’I have yet many ideas for the cycle. The initial inspiration had been the light I observed in nature, but with time I started to alter it, and finally I began to design my own light - more distinct and planned. The composition is vital for me as this is the skeleton of the painting. Intermittently, I create it on instinct, other times explicitly with mathematical precision, as I would like to achieve ideal proportions there. It is the composition which makes the framework wherein you can build up; only then there is room for the expression of brush strokes’. These dark paintings with flashes of light are actually fully abstract, but they also resound the echo of connections with nature – the reflexion of moonlight in the surface of water, or the starlit sky. They also refer to the romantic aura of Caspar David Friedrich’s works. The painters are 200 years apart but, for liking the German romantic, Robert Motelski has recently even visited the surroundings of Dresden in Saxon Switzerland, and reached through a forest trail the places where Friedrich used to paint. Mountains also represent the frequent subject matter of Robert Motelski’s work, but of a significantly more dynamic mode than the ‘Light’. He outlines their ridges with a zigzag line, running into infinity. Assuredly, they make mountain ranges, though emerging on canvas from a completely imaginary space. The line of snow-covered tops resembles at times texturally painted white clouds juxtaposed against the dark background; otherwise its expression is strengthened by the fluorescent shine, resembling a flashlight, and at sunset it fills up with intensively orange colour and becomes similar to a burning skyline. It becomes the most mysterious in daily winter light, when it turns into a delicate streak of light blue merging with the bright background – the white sky and snow, occasionally slightly muffled by a shade of misty grey. Mountains as the artistic subject started to fascinate him back in 2018, during a trip to Salzburg for the exhibition in Sandhofer Gallery. He reached Salzburg early in the morning, so took a walk to the gallery, admiring the Alpen landscape. ’I saw the mountains covered with snow in the distance, blending with the sky. And that inspired me to paint the first picture of the mountains, with the simultaneous reference to the abstract - the division of vertical versus horizontal, a bit similarly as at Malevich’s’, he explains. In almost monochromatic ‘Clouds’ he also alludes to the merging colours of the sky and the ground, depending on light and season. Accordingly, the backgrounds of these acrylic paintings remain unified and flat, much contrasting with the expressionistic lines shaping the outlines of clouds. The composition is ruled by the juxtaposition of statics and dynamics. The artist wants the picture to work mostly in the visual realm, hence he pays great attention to colour. In earlier oil works he did not evert from contrasting strong shades, but with time took to monochromatic paintings, either dark or light, varied by the change of colour tones in horizontal colour schemes, as in ‘snow’ landscapes and the’ Clouds’. Also, in the nocturnal series of ‘Shadow’, where the dark layers of shade intertwine with the streaks of light blue on the edges, as if in the after-vision of the sky and its water reflection. To some extent, one may recall the inspirations of American abstract minimalism of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, working respectively by vast fields of colour. The ultimate aiming at synthesis merged with spiritual contemplation give the paintings of Robert Motelski the conciseness and depth of meditative haiku, which is devoid of irrelevant words. And speaking of contemporary Japanese references, Motelski reveals his inspiration of On Kawara, the artist who worked in New York, and in particular his cycle ‘Today’ – the black paintings solely depicting updating dates in white as a bare trace of existence. Painting and nature make a very versatile subject matter. Habitually, for several years, Robert Motelski would go canoeing on the Brda river in Tucholski Forest in Pomerania. He treats the expeditions as the mental trip en plein-air, when he neither paints nor sketches, sometimes just takes pictures that he never transfers to canvas. It is a vital time for him providing with new ideas. The window view to the forest in Mazowia, the surroundings depicted in the works of Iwaszkiewicz, works similarly though, and inspired the series and rhythm of his own abstract trees. The creative ideas of the artist do have a connection with nature then, albeit completely transformed into own vision and abstract code.