Gallery Barbara von Stechow

Leszek Skurski, Joanna Skurska

Galerie Barbara von Stechow is presenting a double exhibition by Polish artist couple Leszek Skurski and Joanna Skurska to mark the start of the Frankfurt gallery season. In "moments meet memories", Leszek Skurski and Joanna Skurska combine their artistic visions to create a fascinating overall show. From September 5 to October 2, 2024, the exhibition invites visitors to lose themselves in a world of fleeting moments and lasting memories. Leszek Skurski's monochrome compositions of light and movement meet Joanna Skurska's sensual nature studies. Together they create a dialog between transience and permanence, emotion and contemplation. Galerie Barbara von Stechow is delighted to present this extraordinary double exhibition and cordially invites art lovers and interested parties to the vernissage on September 4, 2024.

Leszek Skurski captures images of standstill, of pausing and persisting in an action, out of an attitude, in concentrated form and narrative density. Many fleeting moments of existence or togetherness are captured on the canvas: like excerpts from a sequence, like snapshots between their appearance and disappearance. In this sense, the artist today, in times of rapid floods of information and images, repeatedly concentrates on the "one" image that tells an entire story. In doing so, he shows many things from a distance, bringing them particularly close to the action. Today, his figures are reduced to the essentials: To a vanishingly small black figure in an expressive posture and gesture, removed from their surroundings, rendered in an environment that is sometimes only fragmentarily hinted at, but mostly completely faded out. This is done in favor of a largely object-free surface that spreads out on the canvas in bright painting, rich in shades. On display are various scenes of everyday or non-everyday life that can be "perceived", reflecting much that is familiar and trivial, but also unique or spectacular and provocative. They show, among other things, a "meeting" and an "interview", they present a "date", a "parade" or an "arrival" and they depict a "help" or a "warning". Again and again, imagery emerges here that depicts something seemingly unremarkable, something interpersonal, and at the same time questions it. Scenes of convivial get-togethers or isolation, of relaxation or alienation, of observation or surveillance, of trust or conspiracy. All these images condense a reality that can be viewed from several sides. They all bear witness to something visible and leave plenty of room for the invisible. Everything remains open, without a recognizable outcome.

Joanna Skurska uses copper or silver wire to design and shape her objects into filigree and transparent busts, mostly female and figure-hugging. They are sculptures in the field of tension between free and applied art, between art object and wearable art. In addition to sculptures, Skurska devotes herself to painting with oil paint and acrylic on wood. Her works are inspired by nature and leave plenty of room for her own thoughts and interpretations: Stems, blades of grass, leaves and flowers form the basis of her works. They entwine individually or in small groups in her pictures without ever taking up the entire surface. In addition to earthy pastel shades, the artist also plays with strong, intense colors such as electric blue, poppy red or opal green. Her delicate and fragile plants seem to float and are not held up by any roots. Nothing indicates their life cycle: are they blossoming, growing or withering? They emerge as if from nowhere to feel their way through the work in slow and careful movements, as if they were carried by a light breeze.