Roots — The 1980s — Painting Series — Sławomir Witkowski

◦Individual Exhibition◦Sławomir Witkowski◦REFEKTARZ Contemporary Art Gallery, Kartuzy near Gdańsk◦July 25, 2026◦Individual Exhibition◦Sławomir Witkowski◦REFEKTARZ Contemporary Art Gallery, Kartuzy near Gdańsk◦July 25, 2026◦Individual Exhibition◦Sławomir Witkowski◦REFEKTARZ Contemporary Art Gallery, Kartuzy near Gdańsk◦July 25, 2026◦Individual Exhibition◦Sławomir Witkowski◦REFEKTARZ Contemporary Art Gallery, Kartuzy near Gdańsk◦July 25, 2026

Roots — The 1980s — Painting Series — Sławomir Witkowski — Sławomir Witkowski

Roots – The 1980s is not a narrative about the past, but about the emergence of a language. The cycle reveals the moment when the image ceases to be a formal exercise and begins to operate as an act – a response to the tensions of reality, a record of psychological states, a tool of communication. The 1980s are understood here not as a chronological frame but as a field of experience shaped by intensity, uncertainty, rapid cultural shifts, and existential tension.

Across paintings and graphic works, a language develops without fixed rules yet with a clear internal force: distorted figures, sharp contrasts, grotesque shifts, irony, and a persistent tension between sign and representation. Form is not treated as an autonomous goal but remains subordinated to expression, impulse, and the necessity of reaction. These works do not pursue harmony; they pursue intensity.

Stencil-based graphics play a decisive role within this process. Their development followed an experimental and autonomous trajectory, both stylistically and technically. Colour stencil becomes a means of constructing tensions between sign, figure, and space, forming a visual idiom without a direct precedent. This “endemic” formal language is not a separate episode but a structural foundation of the later painting.

The works operate through a tension between expression and structure. Grotesque distortions and irony are neither decorative nor humorous devices; they function as modes of describing the human condition within systems of chaos, ideology, and absurdity. Pieces such as Interrogation expose the tension between the individual and the system, between sign and psychological experience. Festive Balloon introduces a grotesque contrast between the lightness of the scene and its existential weight, while The Barn Exploded condenses the energy of sudden disintegration – a moment of destabilisation translated into painterly form.

Seen from this perspective, Roots does not designate a historical period but a source. It records the formation of a visual language shaped from the outset by tension, distortion, irony, and intensity. Not a return – but a point of departure.