Tomasz Kręcicki 02:43, 2024
The painting depicts an oversized washing machine, caught dancing above the floor as if in mid-motion. The work makes the rattling of a washing machine palpable, even let us nearly feel its vibrations.
02:43 is a perfect example of Kręcicki’s fusion of representation and abstraction, of life experience and art history. While its rectangle with its off-center circle is clearly marked as a washing machine—enough detail is provided for us to read it as such an appliance—the painting is not simply a sign to be deciphered. Its flatness plays with the ambivalence inherent in twentieth-century painting’s schism between self-referentiality and representation. As such, its forms also draw on the history of abstraction, including Kasimir Malevich’s iconic black square, Ellsworth Kelly’s dancing shapes, or the enlarged abstracted objects of 1960s Pop Art.