Nicodim Gallery Los Angeles is pleased to present Sandomir, by Berlin-based artist Przemek Pyszczek. The exhibition includes two bodies of work: Facade paintings—colorfield paintings framed behind metal grills—and Playground Structures, sculptures that reference children’s playground equipment. These bodies of work result from his continuous research on bloki—clusters of low-cost, concrete-paneled, prefabricated apartment buildings constructed after World War II in his birthplace, Poland.
Pyszczek zooms in on details of painted building exteriors as the departure point for his Facade paintings. He employs abstracted color fields to represent a figurative context of source material as his metaphor for sociopolitical commentary. The vernacular graphic design of the grill references the decorative element in window bars and fences found throughout Poland, particularly in Sandomierz, a town in southeastern Poland where part of his family originates from. Sandomierz, or Sandomir as the town is known in other languages, works as another point of investigation for Pyszczek in exploring the crossing point of personal memory and a broader social history.
The Playground Structure series similarly explores objects that are both personal and universal. In his travels around Poland, Pyszczek documents these objects as they are found today, and then works with metalworkers to re-create these objects from photos, allowing their memories to come through in these structures. He then paints and deconstructs them as a way of mediating the past.
Przemek Pyszczek was born in 1985 in Poland. He graduated in 2007 from University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, with a degree in Environmental Design. He currently lives and works in Berlin.