The painting that makes a compelling read

The December auction "Art Today. Curator's Choice" will include the work "GRAND AMOUR", which is the latest painting by Piotr Czajkowski.

"GRAND AMOUR" comes from the series "METRO", which the artist has been creating continuously since 2012. The starting point here is the city of Paris, captured by Czajkowski as a form of a living organism made not only of the urban layer but also of a diverse social and cultural fabric. This concept, suggesting more biomorphic depictions, was approached in a completely different manner. Throughout the process of creating the series, the artist developed his own artistic language, which presents the metaphor of a city in a precise, rhythmic, even analytical way. Choosing Paris as the protagonist of the entire series is a reference to the European tradition, as the artist himself said, "this city is a symbol of Latin culture in the broadest sense, it constitutes the foundation of the universal values of European culture and its history, and at the same time the account of the most blazing present".

The central part of the "GRAND AMOUR" composition is filled with the text inscribed in a geometric grid of lines. For Czajkowski, each word is both a carrier of a specific, legible meaning and an artistic mean full of aesthetic value. The artist said, "The Greek carmina figurata indicated the possibility of twofold text interpretation in the poetic hyper-sign, that is in the context of a narrative which (despite being divided into lines) still exists in the linear order of reading (time), and the shape that the written text takes, namely a figure that already belongs to another, multidimensional order of the space". This layout evokes very intuitive associations with cartography. The title of the series clearly refers to the urban system hidden beneath the city, however, in this context, we should also remember about another architectural structure existing in Paris, which resulted from the Great Reconstruction of the 19th century. 

The painting, although maintained in a monochromatic color scheme, is full of contrasts in the formal aspect. The aforementioned central part of the work is surrounded by expressive and detailed background, which one can read like travel notes. 

Piotr Czajkowski's painting from the "METRO" series was sold at the June auction "Art Now. Curator's Choice" for a record amount of PLN 38,000. The "GRAND AMOUR" will appear at the auction on 7 December 2021