Introduction

Longlati is delighted to present the first institutional solo exhibition in Asia by Polish artist Tomasz Kręcicki on April 2, 2024, showcasing sixteen paintings created by the artist over the past year. This exhibition marks one of the inaugural dual exhibitions at the foundation’s new location on Wen’an Road.

Kręcicki’s paintings resemble prisms that split the colorless world into different luminous facets, subverting the conventional modes of presentation. Through bizarre analogies, he arranges elements whimsically, revealing layers of meaning beyond the surface. The combinations of paintings in this exhibition also attempt to evoke narrative potential, sometimes resembling film’s still frames, other times deliberately misleading through image montages. Flesh-colored lands densely populated with hair-like forests, people lying on forest meadows gazing into the world of their toes—this varied world may be as light as a feather. These perspectives draw perception into a distorted dimension, akin to Alice falling into the rabbit hole, prompting viewers to perceive the mundane in extraordinary ways. As such descents spiral repeatedly, feelings of melancholy and sorrow arise unexpectedly at the edges of humor. Changes in scale imbue impermanent values, rendering what is light heavy.

Light as A Feather is used to denote insignificance, akin to the fleeting nature of metabolism. It describes the numerous miniature worlds depicted by Kręcicki and is echoed in the “Tissue” series, where daily minutiae are wiped away and discarded. These may be commodities without personalities produced by accelerated capitalism, or Andy Warhol’s sardonically shelved Campbell’s soup cans, yet they play pivotal roles in countless emotional moments, fulfilling ordinary needs for cleanliness, solace, and expression. Here, the simplified forms and vibrant poster visuals not only continue the non-academic threads of contemporary Polish painting practices but are also rendered by the artist’s sentimentalism. Through distortions of proportion, perspective, and meaning, lightweight images and objects acquire temperature and weight.

Tomasz Kręcicki
Light as A Feather
Longlati Foundation, Shanghai
April 2 – May 22, 2024
www.longlatifoundation.org