Ignacy Trybowski — Przedmieścia

Marcin Kołpanowicz belongs to those painters who enter the third millennium with the full extent of their creative potential. Born in Kraków (1963), he studied at the local Academy of Fine Arts (1982–1987), earning his diploma in the painting studios of Professors Stanisław Rodziński and Zbylut Grzywacz. He has participated in several exhibitions abroad and in Kraków, where he presented his own collection of paintings at the "Inny Świat" (Another World) gallery.

While many artists begin with trials and searches from which an individual character only occasionally crystallizes—sooner or later—Marcin Kołpanowicz is an example of a determined and consistent approach from the very beginning. This awareness of purpose is a rather rare phenomenon, especially among the younger generation, intoxicated by the "firework-like" brilliance and flashiness of contemporary art in its countless, though often elusive, manifestations. Skeptical of the extreme expressions of modern art, Kołpanowicz nonetheless remains its representative.

He practices representational painting, often with metaphorical or symbolic undertones. In this movement, which possesses such a long and persistently living tradition, he distinguishes himself with a unique presence. His paintings are a peculiar record of real motifs, perceived in what seem to be "ready-made" painterly forms existing in the actual environment. Indeed, this has always been the source of creative inspiration, drawing the artist with the aesthetic appeal of interpretation or the painterly stimulation of views of nature, landscapes, cities, objects, or people. Yet, it is only seemingly the art of a visualist, for above all, imagination and the possibilities of its painterly transposition are essential here.

In Kołpanowicz’s paintings, we see cathedrals—alleys with a perspective of poplars acting like nave pillars, with rows of church pews, and above them, high up, a fata morgana of a Gothic vault; ancient, exotic fortified cities on a boundless stony plain under a vast sky with backlit, dynamically swirling clouds; the presbyteries of abandoned churches with the light of a comet piercing through the window tracery; unsettling, crumbling structures at the water’s edge, strange creatures emerging from the depths and gathering on the shore; temples and fantastic architectural views, still lifes, figures, and nudes of young girls with symbolic attributes (e.g., shells) against an underwater landscape... Finally, identifiable vedute and specific buildings of Kraków’s Kazimierz and Podgórze districts, sometimes isolated facades and details, some rendered with veristic precision...

Thus, we see a real world of concrete images alongside fantastic spaces; imagined depictions with a nearly scholarly evocation of their compellingly probable appearance and situation. A kind of "cinematic" realism and an unreal, though suggestively material, seemingly local color; the precision of objects, surfaces, and solids, combined with lunar light and suspended time—the atmosphere of a disquieting theater. These compositions are based on the paradoxical experience of observation and fantasy. We find ourselves, as it were, within the circle of sensations known to us. But upon reflection, it turns out to be an illusion: it is a world being discovered before us, seen and artistically composed by Kołpanowicz! We may have encountered this world before, but we did not perceive it—certainly not in the way Kołpanowicz presents it. These are peculiar visions told in a convincing manner. They are more than mere stories, for these painterly interpretations are an exponent of a worldview, the artist's philosophical revelation. Kołpanowicz finds philosophical emotion particularly in visions of the "Suburb"—both in the literal sense and in its metaphorical dimension.