Jarek Puczel
With a background in film and design, Polish painter Jarek Puczel found his vocation in painting. For the last fifteen years he has worked prolifically, showing at many international art fairs and galleries.
Puczel's subject is the figure, particularly the head. His compositions typically feature a couple, male and female, engaged in an intimate embrace. A romantic and idealised moment is rendered in a coolly dispassionate style. His technique is graphic and crisp; the colour and tone flat, the draughtsmanship precise. The models are sparingly described: contours are missing, which allows the background to bleed through. The subjects float over the picture plane, as if at risk of disintegration. At odds with the implied emotive content, the technique sets up a tension, a critical distance from the act depicted.
As the artist's method owes a debt to the world of design, so the compositions, in their cropping and editing, owe something to film. These are images of focussed drama, like stills clipped from a continuum. They are elements of a story, which, although familiar, we are not entirely privy to. Mysterious in their content, we are invited to fill in an interpretation from the clues. Are these pictures of tenderness, alienation or something cynically performative? The coolness of delivery leaves it up to the viewer to decide whether to take the picture at face value or not.
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Jarek PuczelCalifornia Dreamin', 2023Oil on canvas23 5/8 x 23 5/8 in
60 x 60 cm -
Jarek PuczelEnergies, 2023Oil on canvas23 5/8 x 27 1/2 in
60 x 70 cm -
Jarek PuczelFrequency, 2023Oil on canvas15 3/4 x 23 5/8 in
40 x 60 cm -
Jarek PuczelReflection, 2023Oil on canvas39 3/8 x 47 1/4 in
100 x 120 cm -
Jarek PuczelSummer Evening, 2023Oil on canvas19 3/4 x 15 3/4 in
50 x 40 cm -
Jarek PuczelTuning in, 2023Oil on canvas23 5/8 x 27 1/2 in
60 x 70 cm -
Jarek PuczelLovers (12), 2022Oil on canvas12 3/8 x 12 3/8 in
31.5 x 31.5 cm -
Jarek PuczelLovers (15), 2022Oil on canvas39.4 x 43.3 in
100 x 110 cm
