Rafał Bujnowski, Paper Towel/Landscape from the series Hygiene and Plastic, 2018

oil, paper, 26 x 23 cm the work has the artist's certificate of authenticity

origin: private collection, Lodz
exhibited: Art and Hygiene. Rafał Bujnowski. Exhibition of the winner of the Jan Cybis Award for 2018, DAP Gallery, Warsaw, 2019.

Rafał Bujnowski (1974, Wadowice) Painter, graphic designer, author of video projects. From 1993 to 1995 he studied at the Faculty of Architecture of the Cracow University of Technology, and then from 1995 to 2000 at the Faculty of Graphic Arts of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. From 1994 to 2001 he was active in the Ładnie Group, at the same time from 1998 to 2001 he ran the Open Gallery in Cracow, where he exhibited, among other things, posters depicting everyday objects in a formula similar to supermarket product advertising.

The times of Bujnowski's early activity were precisely the fascination with the object - a product that could provide a direct model for traditional painting or graphic prints. Paintings from this period are works that deludedly resemble objects such as bricks, boards or VHS tapes. The artist achieved an almost trompe l'oeil effect. These works can be read in the spirit of the tradition of conceptualism, while at the same time they belong to the current of "pop-banalism" - a phenomenon present in Polish painting of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

With time, Bujnowski moved away to positions closer to abstract painting, although even the most ascetic, completely black paintings still depict reality - landscape.

The work presented at the auction was shown at the exhibition Plasticity and Hygiene:

"The exhibition Plasticity vs. Hygiene is the premiere presentation of an extensive series of works on paper, which the artist has been working on for the past year. Using an unconventional material - paper kitchen towels - and a semi-mechanical painting process, Bujnowski pits the essence of plasticity: creating the illusion of representation. The images that make up this series oscillate on the borderline between narrative and the imaginary. The starting point here is the routine procedure of cleaning brushes. The images on the towels are created in passing, so to speak, as a composition of dirt rubbed into the paper. Bujnowski treats this hygienic aspect of the painting process not only as a metaphor, but also literally as a method of 'head cleaning,' a game bordering on psychoanalysis and obsessive stimulation of the imagination." - ZPAP press materials.

Rafal Bujnowski is, among others, the winner of the international art prize Europas Zukunft (2005), and his works can be found in many museum collections, including the Sprengel Museum in Hannover, Sammlung Goetz in Munich, Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, Rubell Familly Collection in Miami and the most important Polish museums of contemporary art.