I am rooted in the here and now.
I comment on our times, customs, values and the culture of the 20th and 21st century.
— Marcin Maciejowski
Around You at Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Marais is an exhibition of recent paintings by Polish artist Marcin Maciejowski. Drawing on art history, contemporary media and popular culture alike, Maciejowski crafts an iconography fit for the cyber-reality of the twenty-first century. Uniquely attuned to how modern technology constantly reshapes ways of seeing, he immortalises fleeting snapshots of daily digital life in his signature realist style.
Yves Saint-Laurent, 2023
Oil on canvas
180 × 120 cm (70.87 × 47.24 in)
A chronicler of everyday life, Maciejowski sources his imagery from a variety of media – including newspapers, television, advertising and his own photographs – depicting scenes that range from the seductive to the mundane. In one work, he depicts a runway model taken from a Polish fashion magazine from the 1990s, her Yves Saint Laurent outfit carved through a delicate interplay of light and shadow that imbues her with a sculptural presence.
Selfie (The Manggha Museum), 2023
Oil on canvas
190 × 90 cm (74.8 × 35.43 in)
This work enters into compositional and chromatic dialogue with another masterfully framed painting in which the artist portrays a brightly clad female figure taking a mirror selfie in a nondescript bathroom, which, as the work’s title reveals, is located in the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology in Kraków. This pairing forms a incisive commentary on the evolution of beauty rituals and aspirations, from the glossy page to self-direction in the mirror.
Maciejowski’s work frequently revisits art history through distinctly contemporary lenses. In one painting, he depicts a screenshot-like close-up of an instantly recognisable YouTube documentary on Jean-Michel Basquiat, homing in on the artist’s hand wielding a paintbrush as well as the video’s 265 likes.
Sharon Stone standing beside "Suprematist Composition" ..., 2023
Oil on canvas
130 × 170 cm (51.18 × 66.93 in)
His reflexive practice grapples with the mediation of art not only by the digital realm but also by rampant capitalism, as epitomised by his painting of a wide-eyed Sharon Stone gesturing towards Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition (1919–20) in the background – the avant-garde artist’s first-ever painting offered at auction, as the comic-like caption elucidates. The radical nature of Malevich’s non-objective painting is supplanted by the sensationalisation of the art market and its intersection with celebrity consumer culture.
Ranging from a scopophilic still from a 1960s Polish film to a sellotaped portrait of his wife as Jan van Eyck after the latter’s turbaned Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?) (1433), this body of work reveals both the breadth and depth of Maciejowski’s painterly universe.
One of Poland's best-known contemporary painters, Marcin Maciejowski first came to international prominence as part of the Grupa Ładnie (Pretty Group), alongside fellow students from the technical university in Kraków.
Maciejowski's work is represented in distinguished public collections, including the Belvedere, Vienna; Volpinum Kunstsammlung, Vienna; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Foundation, Vienna; Museum der Moderne, Salzburg; MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art, Kraków; Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; SCHAUWERK Sindelfingen; and Burger Collection, Berlin. The National Museum in Kraków held a comprehensive solo exhibition of Maciejowski's work in 2010, followed by solo shows at Ostdeutsche Galerie, Regensburg the same year and the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead in 2013. More recently, his works were included in exhibitions at the Państwowa Galeria Sztuki, Sopot (2019), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków (2020) and the Belvedere Museum, Vienna (2024).
