LEON TARASEWICZ – GENIUS OR ONE HIT WONDER?

Białystok isn’t exactly blessed with too many contemporary art venues – In fact, for its size and hard edged reputation, where you would expect to find at least two or three small alternative style galleries tucked away here and there somewhere off the high-street, there is in fact none… What it lacks in this respect however is more than made up for by Galeria Arsenal.

Attached to the city's beautiful Pałac Branickich w Białymstoku it boasts a calendar of rolling exhibitions which range in their international substance as much as any that Warsaw has to offer. But, like most venues, shows can be hit and miss regardless of their cultural status, so having work by Leon Tarasewicz, whether genius or not, for me this month - a definite hit…

The current work on show represents a rather sketchy, though interesting retrospective of work however by one of Białystok’s own. Rated among the top ten most important contemporary artists in Poland, Tarasewicz also rates as possibly one of only two or three high profile painters I’ve actually come to like here myself. The problem as things currently stand however, as evident by viewing the work first hand in Białystok, is that Tarasewicz clearly displayed his greatest powers as a painter early on in his career and now appears to be stuck somewhere in no-man’s land or worse still for a painter, the proverbial corner.

Pared down to become almost nothing but motif, his earliest canvases are saved from being mere pattern by a clear link to their original source and a sublime use of unadorned figuration!

1987 - 190 x 260 - dyptyk, olej na płótnie

Unfortunately not so in recent times! Whether Tarasewicz is going through a personal battle with content or bending to the pressure of intellectual conceptualism is unclear. His output in recent years has remained true to his passion for the Polish Landscape and his subject remains clear in reference to earlier work, but for whatever reason, what has become evident is that the artist has essentially abandoned his prowess as a painter and ‘the canvas’ alike in favour of a much less considered means of painting - finding its expression in a giddy kaleidoscope of colour adorning the very fabric of numerous venues and self built rooms as a poor cousin to installation.

Still, the show’s definitely worth a look as the artist at worst remains intriguing with his best work outweighing the bad…! Also showing this month: New / Old Routes, a selection of Central Asian Video: Simply tedious in my honest opinion!

AND ON A SAD NOTE..,

.., we’ve just learnt that the place which has essentially become our local – a place which effortlessly plays our endless CD compilations for fun – a place where incidental acquaintances have become good mates, is due to close at the end of June...

Propping up the bar in Rubikon – Photo: Michał Opryszczko

... It’s a long and stupid story of government regulation, whereby the block in which Rubikon is attached is to be demolished and rebuilt because of some clause which deems it illegal when built under communism, this giving some opportunist developer scavenging rights to what is essentially a sound building and great pub… This of course leaves the poor owners out of pocket and ‘more importantly’ nowhere that bears the simplest resemblance to a real pub for Dominika and me to sup in, bar only one other - Tawerna way out on the other side of town… Sad..? Devastating actually!