IGOR KORPACZEWSKI – KW „ FAMILY “

The eloquent title of KW's exhibition "Family" suggests from the beginning a showcase of art of the most intimate statements. Igor Korpaczewski / KW (b. 1959 in Prague) entered the Czech art scene in the second half of the 1980s, generationally associated with the Hardheads group, he has remained a solitary artist of a distinctive, internally compact painterly expression. His work is defined by a fascination with figurative painting, which in later stages is complemented by overlaps into the realms of conceptual art. However, the two did not directly collide at the Zlín exhibition. The current exhibition project is filled with thirteen clearly defined thematic works. The individual figures materialize on the surface of the paintings, whether large or very modest in format, in a story whose most important part is the birth of a new life. The opening part of the show, which is dominated by a line-up of three protagonists created especially for this exhibition, one of the not very frequent individual presentations of KW, is characteristic.

The author and those closest to him have completely conquered the exhibition space of Cabinet T., which does not deliberately deny its industrial origin, on the contrary, it draws from it the depth of its atmosphere. Despite its intimate nature, the show gives a full sense of the breadth of the artist's scope. His mastery of brushwork and paint needless to say, his admiration and humility for his great predecessors (Velázquez and Matisse) is clearly present. The concrete motifs are free from all irrelevant details and could perhaps be simple at first glance. On the contrary, the paintings burden (in a good way) the mind of the observer. Portraits of human existence are captured in a single moment. But that moment is decisive: they become the carriers of whole events. And we their humble readers. Korpaczewski's ability to process everyone's existential feelings using colour alone is his fundamental asset here.

Even if the exhibition project was not realized in its original idea due to unforeseen complications, its testimonial value is strong. It deftly brings together all the important elements that appear in Korpaczewski's work. The characters are not always fleshed out; we arrive at a generalisation based on one family. The story culminates in the painting Escape to nowhere as a metaphor for the not too distant future. As the artist himself remarked on the catalogue two-sheet, "Life will appear on an alien planet, perhaps when we bring it there. The point is to have somewhere to return to. For the child to have somewhere to return to."

Pavlína Pyšná