In his paintings Przemek Matecki (*1976 in Zagan/Poland) reconfigures historical stages of those painterly gestures, which have today become recognized as the canonized core of European art history. In his recent works Rembrandt, Delacroix, Géricault, Cézanne and Maurice Denis are reappearing in allusions and direct quotes, demonstrating the banality of their achievements as much as their still poignant formal grandness. Matecki refigures these pre-history of European Modernism in their very own medium and at the same time invades it with his re-paintings, constituting in his case the ground for collages, drawings and variations in oil, pencil and paper on canvas.
Matecki mixes painterly mastery with its humorous, but yet formally strict amendments, with cut out models from mass cultural magazines, art ads and stages of prefabrication, drawings and brush strokes. He seems to probe the masterly techniques and signatures against the backdrop of contemporary advertising and fashion photography, witnessing that their compositions resemble one another, even if their surfaces do not.