It comes and goes. In time or in space. Returns with hardly any memory of the past, never knowing the future. Pure pleasure will neither be stopped, nor cares to last. Sometimes sudden and explosive, other times creepy. By definition temporary, ad hoc, nonadjacent. As for lust for pleasure and the tensity felt when painting in that state of spirit – do they fade away or leave their trace on those very paintings? And if there was an algorithm for measuring the pleasure of creation, would it contain that specific pleasure deriving from the mere proximity to a painting?

Pleasure is pure and innocent. It is the quest for it that leads us astray. It leads to peculiarities; coops up in the world of circles, checkers, spots and lines. In an attempt to portray those bizarre states experienced when tracking pleasure, the artist himself falls into weirdness.

Paintings shown at this exhibition were created when the artist – Jarosław Fliciński was at the same age as the gallerist – Piotr Drewko is now. Does this bending of time make its passage at least a bit less cruel? Does the passage of time change the shape of pleasure? The one experienced by the artist when his enthusiasm and an imperative bordering with the fear of entering a new reality, pushed him towards his Jumps into Water. What is left of that pleasure today, when the theme of water – or rather of its absence – returns? How does it compare to the pleasure of painting roads, roundabouts, houses, barely visible cities that have been transformed in time just as the cities the artist used to visit or live in?

Ula Ryciak, June 11, 2019