Alek Slon

CITY BY THE SEA

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curator : Janek Kann

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opening: June 13, 7 pm

visiting: June 14, 9 am - 8 pm

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The title of the exhibition CITY BY THE SEA refers to Rome – the place where Alek Slon was born and formed as an artist, but it is also a reference to the famous painting by Ambrogio Lorenzetti City by the Sea from 1320. The presentation Siena:The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 currently ongoing at the National Gallery in London, became the direct reason for organizing the exhibition at the Brzeska 12 Pavilion in Warsaw's Praga district. Examining the way of presenting space, the artist refers to the works of the masters of the Italian Trecento and asks about the principle of perceived reality.
The pioneers of the Renaissance revolution: Duccio, Giotto, Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers introduce a third dimension to painting – the wonderful geometry of space. However, it would be a mistake to interpret this fact as a simple turn towards realism. In the case of the proto-Renaissance masters - as in the works of Alek Slon - space is not simply an objective circumstance - a fact that must be depicted, but is rather a universal field of the appearance of meaning. In the language of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology: presenting space as revealing meaning draws attention to what is hidden from us. We enter the realm of mystery: an invisible layer of reality that cannot be shown or expressed except by revealing what conceals it.