Drawing, Painting – Between Sign and Matter
Catalogue Review
The latest album presenting Marcin Wrzal’s work allows us to trace different aspects of his artistic practice. The division into drawing and painting provides a clear structure, while the large reproductions allow the viewer to look closely at individual works as well as at their juxtapositions. Not without reason, the text on the cover describes the catalogue as an “invitation to an attentive, individual engagement with Marcin Wrzal’s work” and emphasises the importance of personal interpretation.
The graphic design is restrained and consistent. White, black and light beige fields provide a calm background for the reproductions, while the layouts of individual double-page spreads are structured by recurring lines and arrangements of dots. Importantly, these elements were not created merely as decoration. They are scans of drawings created by Wrzal specifically for the publication’s design, making the graphic linking elements part of the artist’s visual language as well.
The section devoted to drawings brings together simple, minimalist works in shades of brown and grey, based on line and sign. The forms that appear within them nevertheless sometimes create “dense, pulsating structures”, in which it is difficult to identify a single focal point. Alongside smaller works, the catalogue includes larger compositions, where empty space becomes as important as the drawing itself.
In the painting section, the same distinctive visual language takes on a different energy. There is considerably more colour, stronger contrast and greater freedom in the construction of forms. Alongside more compact paintings are compositions whose surfaces are almost entirely filled with lines, patches of colour and overlapping shapes. Bringing the two sections together makes it possible to see how motifs and ways of constructing an image change with the medium.
The catalogue does not attempt to impose a single interpretation. The reproductions, page layouts and graphic elements create a publication that invites the viewer into the process of looking rather than providing a ready-made analysis of the artist’s work. This is particularly significant because in Wrzal’s practice a concrete form can quickly become a sign, and a sign can turn into something far more open.
The presentation of Marcin Wrzal’s album Drawing, Painting took place during the opening of the exhibition Apiary Reds, or Metamorphoses on 6 June 2026 at Galeria Art Brut.
The catalogue project was supported by the Scholarship of the President of the City of Lublin.
Marcin Wrzal
Rysunek, malarstwo (Drawing, Painting)
Published by Polihymnia
Lublin 2026
Property of the Lublin Theater Therapy Foundation. All rights reserved.
Realized with financial support from the City of Lublin