PIOTR JANAS
“Istituto del Cervello”
March 19th - May 20th 2010

Cardi Black Box presents Istituto del Cervello the first solo show presented in Italy by Polish Artist Piotr Janas, one of the most interesting young European painters. Piotr Janas, born in 1970, has been invited to participate in solo and group exhibitions in galleries in New York, Berlin and Los Angeles. His works have been displayed at the Kunsthalle in Basel and at the 50th Venice Biennale. He is a key figure among the group of artists from Poland that have established themselves at an international level in the last ten years.

Strongly influenced by surrealist imaginary, Piotr Janas expresses in his paintings a dark sense of humour, an ambiguous and elusive irony. His work is a monument to ambiguity that hangs in between different expressions, shapes and moods.

Janas' canvases are constantly in tension between figurative and abstract, organic and mechanical, violent and sensual. They seem to hint at a shape and to deny it at the same time. The subjects of his paintings are indefinite figures that look like intestines, guts and body parts whose strong visual impact reveals their process of metamorphosis: tears, dilations, lacerations, throttles make his works seem bizarre experiments accomplished in an hypothetical laboratory and, at the same time, portraits of the unconscious.

Smoke, fluid explosions, sex organs and fragments of epidermis alternate to geometrical shapes, to elements that resemble a surgeon's paraphernalia. The twisted and erratic lines contrast with the sharp and precise angles of the geometrical shapes that the artist often superimposes or incorporates in his compositions: triangles, circles and rectangles become anthropomorphic presences that illustrate the metaphorical battle between the cleanliness of geometry and the impulsive and passionate “mistake” of expressionism.

curated by Sarah Cosulich Canarutto