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Dorota Kolodziejczyk at Joseph Helman - New York
Art in America, Dec, 2003 by Lilly Wei
Fledgling artist Dorota Kolodziejczyk had her first solo exhibition at Joseph Helman this past spring, an engaging debut called "Paint and Picture," consisting of six handsome acrylic canvases. All made within the past two years, the paintings ranged in size from petite (16 1/4 by 20 inches) to extra large (72 by 96 inches) and might be viewed as either pure abstractions or schematic landscapes, not unlike the endeavors of several current painters such as Suzanne Caporael, all of whom are exploring ways to refresh painting conceptually and renegotiate the abstract/ representational divide.
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In works that are dedicated to process, materiality and color, Kolodziejczyk reinstates abstraction's pours and stains to create a series of controlled but undulating, irregularly bordered horizontal bands. Carefully manipulated, they stretch across the canvas to suggest wave-drenched beaches or painted deserts beneath flat white clouds. In Yokohama (2003), a little beauty of a painting, the canvas is left bare at the top to reveal a seductive glimpse of the support. The rest is overlaid by gradations of watered blue that have soaked into the canvas and recall stylized waves and clouds. Near the bottom is poured a narrow, slightly raised stream of paint the luscious color of golden-green extra virgin olive oil. All the paintings are arresting in their color combinations, none of which are entirely natural, though they refer to nature as filtered through the history of abstract painting.
Phoenix (2002) is constructed out of intense red-oranges and corals paired with deep greens and white in an eye-catching, edgy set of complementaries. Izod (2003) offers a sequence of high-altitude blue, various corals above a band of white, and scalloped sectors of deep blue and acid green that read as mountainous ridges lit by a fiery sunset. The surface in these works is paramount but, nonetheless, distance is implied and, with it, a degree of space. Kolodziejczyk's compositions vary in complexity, her colors bold and stylishly retro, yet with a hint of toxicity that lends her emptied, abstract landscapes weight and an apocalyptic ambience.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
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