马切伊·科什奇: 天鹅绒黎明
马切伊·科斯克（Maciej Kość）于2024年毕业于爱丁堡艺术学院（Edinburgh College of Art），现继续在伦敦皇家艺术学院（Royal College of Art）深造。
《天鹅绒黎明》（Velvet Dawns）是他在VETA by Fer Francés举办的首次个展，此次展览源于他在夏季期间受邀进行的驻地创作。马切伊回忆道：“我试图充分利用VETA的驻地艺术家工作室的条件。工作室离普拉多博物馆和提森博物馆很近，所以我经常去看，既着迷于它们的藏品，也对这些藏品对我创作的潜在影响感到不安。如何抵抗保罗·德·沃斯（Paul de Vos）的《公牛》或戈雅的《拴狗》的吸引力？并且要找到创作的呼吸空间，你还必须承受鲁本斯《银河的诞生》的压力。”
马切伊的创作媒介丰富，以混合技法为主，主要使用丙烯颜料（通过喷枪上色）与软粉彩，绘制于亚麻布画布或木质面板上，有时会加入雕塑感的泡沫元素和拾得物品。他的艺术吸收了多样的风格，从经典绘画、巴洛克、风格主义，到后现代的极繁主义及儿童插画。他汲取灵感于十九世纪崇高的风景画（如哈德逊河画派），拉斐尔前派的经典美学，以及约翰·詹姆斯·奥杜邦（John James Audubon）笔下的鸟类。他同样敬仰当代艺术家，如英国画家彼得·多伊格（Peter Doig）的细腻诗意，沃尔顿·福特（Walton Ford）对假想动物标本的自然主义描绘，以及托马斯·伍德拉夫（Thomas Woodruff）装饰华丽的恐龙形象。他的怪诞画面有时暗示了文学戏谑史诗的复兴，如伊格纳西·克拉西茨基（Ignacy Krasicki）的《鼠史诗》（Mouseiad），或让·德·拉封丹（Jean de La Fontaine）寓言的插画，但马切伊将这些灵感深度整合，形成了独特而现代的艺术风格。
这次展览中包含了一系列壮丽且富有同理心的动物肖像，这些动物以复杂的个性特质示人。展览特别关注常因刻板印象而声名不佳的啮齿类动物，它们有时以卡通形式在较小的作品中出现。然而在整体展览中，这些动物被赋予了新的身份与尊严。它们时而内向、羞怯，时而充满好奇，仰望天空或专注于他物。它们的表情透露出遗憾、伤感或怀旧的复杂情感。马切伊通过他的画面让观众感受到这些动物深刻的主体性——谨慎而脆弱，却也优雅且充满希望。作品暗示着隐秘的叙事与复杂的寓言，但其核心是赋予这些动物特殊的优雅与忧郁。它们的存在感虽小，却不断加强，吸引观众注意到它们的魔力与美感。
马切伊的创作技法融合了喷枪的精细与手工粉彩的丰富质感。粉彩的画法松散、模糊，打破了喷枪技法带来的完美主义，形成了一种绘画性、带有不确定性的美学效果。他花费大量时间专注于创作，沉浸于这些多彩、光感丰富的“天鹅绒与羽毛之兽”的奇幻世界中，为观众打造出梦幻般的视觉体验。
Maciej Kość (b. 2001 in Lodz, Poland) graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2024 and is now continuing his studies at the prestigious London’s Royal College of Art.
Velvet Dawns is his first solo exhibition at VETA by Fer Francés where he was invited for a residency over the summer: “I’ve tried to make the best of my extended VETA residence. The studio is not far from the Prado and the Thyssen and I’ve become as fascinated with their collections as anxious about their influence. How do you resist the pull of Paul de Vos’s Bull or Goya’s Dogs on a Leash? For breathing space, you have to withstand the pressure of Rubens’s Birth of the Milky Way.”
He works in mixed media — mostly acrylics (applied with airbrush) and soft pastels on either linen canvas or wooden panels, occasionally adding sculptural styrofoam elements and found objects.
Maciej Kość metabolizes many widely disparate styles from classic painting, Baroque, Mannerism, through postmodern maximalism, to children’s book illustrations. He draws energies from the sublime nineteenth-century landscape paintings (e.g., Hudson River School), the axiomatic beauty of pre-Raphaelites, and John James Audubon’s birds. Kość also admires contemporary artists such as British painter Peter Doig’s subtle poignancy that grows on you, Walton Ford’s neo-naturalistic illustrations of imagined zoological specimen, and more recently Thomas Woodruff’s baroquely ornate dinosaurs. Kość’s strange imagery sometimes seems to augur a resurgence of interest in literary mock epics, like Ignacy Krasicki’s Mouseiad, or the illustrations of Jean de La Fontaine's fables. But the artist deeply integrates those inspirations into a coherent, unique and contemporary style of his own.
Velvet Dawns collects spectacular and empathetic portraits of animals, identifying them in complex individualities. By design, these are frequently rodents who find it hard to live down their reputation (sometimes caricatured in cartoonish smaller formats). But in Velvet Dawns as a whole, they are vindicated. The animals are at times timid and vaguely introverted. Others can be intensely curious, raptured by the skies, or regarding others with special attention. They betray rich subjectivities rarely read from animals’ faces, subjectivities marked by regret, wistfulness or grief. We find them huddled and timid, cautious and vulnerable but also poised and hopeful for redemption. Sometimes, Kość’s images suggest obscure narratives or complex fables standing behind his scenes. Above all, his portraits — posthumanist if you will — imbue his critters with special grace and melancholy. They may be relatively small in relation to the scale of their settings or just self-effacing, but their presence is increasingly felt. The viewers are counted on to notice the animals’ magic and beauty. Kość himself takes special delight in their charm, intensity and dignified manner as he
spends long hours of wonder and absorption, developing his sublime worlds and multi-hued, light-infused velvet and plumaged beasts.
He has embraced a hybrid technique oscillating between the flawlessness of the airbrush and the rich textures of hand-applied dry pastels. Painterly, precarious, and smudgy, pastels break the spell of the perfectionism setting in in airbrush practices.
