RECENT
PAINTINGS
by MARIA SOCHANIEWICZ
A
well known artist in her native Poland Ms.Sochaniewicz built her reputation
there as a leader of the Neue Wilde movement, a trend in painting
emphasizing expressive figuration. In recent years, however, she has
moved increasingly towards abstraction, while retaining the style
and intensity of her figurative work. Her SOHO20 show features a number
of abstract paintings of uncommon energy, originality and emotional
range. There is a great diversity of color, line, and mood but a unity
of style. Compositionally,
Ms.Sochaniewicz utilize the methods of repetition and recursion as
well as unique color sense in the service of an unapologetic painterly
illusionism. Thus, in some of the works, slashes of thick acrylic
paint form dense tickets, creating surfaces that function like portals
to maze-like worlds topographies oscillate between geometry and biology.
At the other times, her lines form teeming groups or microbe-like
entities hunting in packs. And finally in her more serene moods Sochaniewicz
blends lines into wave like color fields on which small flecks of
light paint float like foam.
In short, Ms.Sochaniewicz has created a uniquely and challenging body
of work that eludes easy classification and hence, merits our attention.
Thomas
Slaughter
Director of SOHO20 Gallery
Press
Release - "Recent Paintings" Exhibition in SOHO20 Gallery, New
York, September, 1998
IN
THE BRUSHWOOD
"I
have an impression, that it isn't easy for the artist to reveal
her secret which might be the farewell with figurative painting.
If it is so, the next gathering with her former public, is going
to be a kind of very intimate confession.
...this time the author has decided to speak out: my present fascination
refers to the signs and structures totally departed from the real
life, so I brought my abstraction.
...the artist that we know is still present, but only in her strong
impact, emphatic gesture, expressiveness and fleshiness of the outline.
It is beyond all questions that the present world of this painting,
with no human figure or outlines of a woman's face, being characteristic
and favorite motives of the author in the past carries in it reliable
transformation of anatomic outline into anatomy of matter. At present,
public can see the carpet of limited structures, the ornamental
repetition of which, pictures them as the elements of some infinite
carpet.
...the world of Maria Sochaniewicz has changed and broaden by the
field of imagination, inspiration of which, and then the interpretation,
leaves a lot of freedom to the artist and to the spectator."
Wojciech Krauze
Introduction
for catalog for exhibition in Test Gallery, (excerpt), May,
1998
A
Harz pyrite...
"A
Harz pyrite - says Cordano - shows various figures as ostrich, salamander,
cock, abraded priest, and also Holy Mary cradling Her Son in Her
Arms" . In her paintings Maria depicts objects of finished
defined form, fish, pyramids, butterflies, snakes etc. With complete
certainty, we cannot deceits in them any escapism from portraying
things.
However,
her paintings apparently originated in the course of denying any
form to visible things. A formless spontaneity, gained by intensive
effort, fascinates by its strength, shows us shapeless things pressing
their objective evidence upon a spectator.
I think that this distinguished achievement also conveys a meaning
of the contemporary understanding of modern art."
Janusz
Petrykowski
June, 1987
"On
the Women the paintings by Maria Sochaniewicz"
"...She
calls them various names: Azteca, Primavera, Nefretete. Her true
name is Victoria - victorious, dominating, fierce femineity. As
powerful as the very picture of vitality, as strong as the elements
of nature.Her lips are lusting for love, her eyes promising fulfillment.Seemingly
quiet, collected, almost dignified, but surrounded with a haze of
madness. At any moment ready to follow the call of instinct..."
Monika Malkowska
February,
1990 (excerpt)
