Landscape, from the series Nocturne

Analysing Rafał Bujnowski’s work, it is hard to resist the impression that what is important in his oeuvre is not a painting as a single entity, but the fact that this entity exists in a certain continuum: on the one hand, as a part of a series, on the other, in the context of his previous and following creations, where he examined the same problem. The formal and conceptual relations between particular canvases are intelligible especially in works that emerged in the process of Bujnowski’s study of painting and its fundamental components: the light and the shadow, the painter’s gesture and the spectator’s perception. The meanings contained in the Landscapes from the Nocturne series are suggested by works from a few other cycles, such as Twilight (2004) or Lamp Black (2007).
 
The key element in Bujnowski’s explorations is the concept of a black picture. The monochromatic canvases he creates are situated between abstraction and figurative painting. The world represented in these seemingly non-representative paintings is revealed to the recipient by means of light: depending on their angle, the rays of light disclose a succession of the scene’s details. His emphatic, impasto brushstrokes construct a composition that is simplified, with an orderly structure and deep space. The smears left by the painter turn into elements of a landscape, or rather, into primary forms containing the principle of landscape. Bujnowski’s landscape is, in essence, a universal landscape matrix extracted from thousands of takes on this classical theme. Bujnowski works as if he wished to get rid of the excessiveness of detail, the discordance of colour and the superfluous accumulation of motifs.
 
Investigating the characteristics of paint, Bujnowski enters a dialogue with the history of art and with painting as such. Associations with The Black Square by Kazimir Malevich, with the problem of the limits of depiction, with minimalism and colour field painting come to mind automatically. A nocturne is a classical theme, which Bujnowski interprets in his own way, demonstrating the new possibilities offered by working with paint and light. Whereas in traditional nocturnes the source of light is clearly defined and belongs to the sphere of representation, in Bujnowski’s works the light that defines the forms must be provided from the outside and the effect of his creative action depends on the position of the spectator. The Landscapes are “being painted” in the process of their perceiving; they are generated in an interaction between the artist, the painterly medium and the recipient.