Minor Incident

The presented paintings were created between 2022 and 2026, and the vast majority of them have never been shown before.

At first glance, they appear to be realistically painted, serene landscapes against which human figures appear. They are dominated by the lush greenery of plants, bathed in the afternoon sun. Upon closer inspection, however, Korolkiewicz’s paintings reveal further secrets, hidden in the interactions between their characters, in those fragments of the scenery not visible to the viewer, and in the reflections in the windows.

Korolkiewicz continues to draw inspiration from his own photographs, they serve the artist as material from which he composes his own scenes, extracting images full of tension from a seemingly uninteresting reality.

As Kinga Kawalerowicz writes: With a sensitivity to colour temperature, green, the most complex and nuanced of colours, shimmers here in an infinite variety of shades. (…) One feels almost sensually the light and air these paintings breathe, the warmth of the sun or the breeze creasing the surface of the water.

Looking at these paintings, we think less and less about the fact that the author has used photography. He still uses photographs, but this is obliterated in the course of the work, absorbed by the painting process. The artist does not try to be meticulous with details. Of course, when viewed from a distance, the paintings create the illusion of reality, but when viewed close-up, they reveal the traces of brushstrokes, the structure built up from the arrangement of colour patches, the “living” tissue created during the work on the painting.