Slawomir Elsner
Monday, 31 August 2009
Again and again, the focus of Slawomir Elsner’s work is “catastrophe’s dazzling beauty”. This series, titled “Windows on the World”, first draws you in with its furious light play and its sensual beauty, and conceptual aspects appear again on the aesthetic master plan in these large-sized coloured pencil drawings. The drawings are based on photos that Elsner took from and in the then still standing World Trade Center in New York in 2001. To be more exact, they were taken from the windows of the “Windows on the World” Club and of the club’s interior on the building’s 107th floor. Meticulously, the artist has transferred the photos with his coloured pencils and their shimmering colours onto a 1.68m x 1.10m format.
Elsner’s dashed application of colour seemingly uses the photos as templates slavishly. He even copies the camera’s faults such as accidental blurs. The large size strengthens the almost garish pictures’ effect. The result is a nearly pictorial impression. Thus, different gestures entwine each other – those of the tourist’s “snap shot”, the documentary drawing and pictorial impressions – and nearly dissolve their contrasts in this infusion.
Text adapted from press release, obtained from Johnen Galerie Berlin.