Before the Beginning

Between 2007 and 2008, Adam Witkowski created a series of paintings that portrayed black metal musicians in their characteristic corpse paint - ironically and with tenderness. Instead of using oil paints, he chose wood tar as his medium. This choice emphasized the theatricality and demonic aesthetic of extreme metal performers, while the thick, sticky blackness of the tar was meant to both attract and repel. Behind the makeup and poses of these musicians lies a surprisingly escapist and romantic stance: a longing for the absolute, for nature and mysticism, and often a childlike dream of being someone “outside the world.” Witkowski highlights this melancholy, and the retreat into darkness becomes a space of freedom. The original paintings have disappeared - some were stolen, others sold or destroyed. In 2025, the artist returns to the series. Tar on canvas is an attempt at reconstruction - a renewed examination of cultural masquerade, the aesthetics of radicalism, and the fragile boundary between seriousness and pastiche. Witkowski is not only recreating the images, but also confronting the memory of his own practice. Revisiting works from nearly two decades ago had already surfaced in his previous painting series nie wracam (I’m not coming back), in which he repainted works created during his art school years. This kind of artistic archaeology becomes a new beginning.