Peter Frederiksen / Tomasz Kręcicki

Prima mostra della nuova serie YINYANG che vede il suo inizio con Peter Frederiksen e Tomasz Kręcicki.

Comunicato stampa

PostmastersROMA is pleased to announce the first exhibition, Tense Anxieties, of our new series YINYANG, and we are thrilled to start it with Peter Frederiksen and Tomasz Kręcicki. Biannually we will mount a show of two artists, who with different approaches and mediums, treat similar themes.

At a first glance, both artists’ works come across as easy going and light, but don’t be fooled by the breeziness of the images and look closer. Each artist, through zooming in on the simple objects or actions, mirrors the intrinsic weight of existence and the tensions within it, such as fear, insecurity, and anxiety.

Peter Frederiksen’s tiny, dense and textured embroideries, which he creates with a free-motion machine, stand in stark contrast with the large flat oil paintings of Tomasz Kręcicki. Frederiksen focuses on particular actions of cartoon characters and Kręcicki more on objects and simple gestures. Each of the works, of both artists, dredge up themes of violence, anxiety, and fear. The other palpable connection between them is that they both take inspiration from popular cultural visual language, Frederiksen draws from post war cartoon animations and Kręcicki from the cinema.

Kręcicki puts a spotlight on the everyday objects, fruits and body parts. He uses cinematographic framing techniques in his compositions and closeups that create the drama. His paintings become portraits and landscapes. The apple core transforms into a mountain range, the fat finger pressing a little red button evokes the tension of anticipation. What will happen? Why is the red button so small? Through deformation and inversion of scale of his subjects Kręcicki pulls out from us, the viewers, visceral sensations of feelings such as nervousness, hesitation, and fear, which we all experience but rarely admit to having.

Peter Frederiksen draws on the mid-century cartoon aesthetics. The nostalgic Looney Tunes animations contain a vast amount of violent visual language He created his own technique which he describes as drawing with a sewing machine. The lines of the thread resemble a pencil drawing and its colors bring in the saturation of pure pigment. He decontextualises the stills by cropping very specific fragments of out of context and presenting the most dramatic moments of ridiculous actions the animation characters perform.