Colour That Changes Form
Exhibition Review
Marcin Wrzal has long belonged to the group of artists whose presence in Galeria Art Brut has become part of its own history. Each successive exhibition, however, reveals different possibilities within his painting. “Apiary Reds...” above all brings an encounter with the figure, whose form is to a significant degree determined by colour, its intensity and contrasts: faces, silhouettes and recognisable shapes appear on the canvases, but are almost immediately disrupted by colour, line and deformation.
Wrzal does not strive to render the figure faithfully, something his viewers have long come to expect. Faces lose their proportions, become elongated, break apart into separate elements or merge into other shapes. Silhouettes are at times only partially legible, as though the artist had stopped the image in the process of its creation, before all its elements had been fully defined. The strong contour delineates forms, but does not close off their meaning.
This time, colour comes to the fore. Intense reds, blues, yellows, oranges, greens and violets appear alongside black, white and grey, creating combinations of considerable visual force. Wrzal's works include both compact, almost monochromatic compositions and paintings saturated with contrasting colours, yet colour here serves not merely to fill in the forms defined by the artist. It cuts across them, extends beyond the contour, creates new divisions and at times almost takes over the entire surface of the painting. As a result, colour becomes one of the principal tools through which form is constructed.
At times, a single face draws the eye; at others, the entire surface of the canvas seems to pulsate with lines, patches of colour and overlapping shapes. The diversity of these solutions does not, however, disrupt the coherence of the whole. On the contrary, it reveals how many possibilities are contained within the artist’s characteristic approach to deforming and reassembling the image.
The surface of the paintings is equally important. Brushstrokes, abrasions, decisive lines and layers of overlapping paint remain visible, giving the works a distinctive, somewhat raw quality. Wrzal’s painting does not conceal the process through which an image comes into being. On the contrary, it reveals it almost directly, allowing the compositions to retain their energy and sense of movement.
“Apiary Reds, or Metamorphoses” is therefore another manifestation of Wrzal’s painting, in which recognisability is never a final state. A figure may become a sign, a face may transform into an arrangement of lines and colours, and an unequivocal shape may be called into question at any moment. Wrzal, as is his tradition, does not merely depict; he continually transforms, together with the viewer, what has just been recognised.
Marcin Wrzal
Apiary Reds, or Metamorphoses
1–30 June 2026
Exhibition opening: 6 June 2026, 20:00 (Night of Culture)
Property of the Lublin Theater Therapy Foundation. All rights reserved.
Realized with financial support from the City of Lublin