On the occasion of Gallery Weekend in Berlin ŻAK | BRANICKA is proud to present a solo exhibition by Dominik Lejman, titled Haptic Aphorisms.
Dominik Lejman, winner of the 2018 Berlin Art Prize, awarded by the Akademie der Künste on behalf of the Berlin Senate (the Federal State of Berlin), works the same way a magician does when daring us to see the invisible. “For me, Lejman’s works are haptic aphorisms and it is in this condition that they are a decisive contribution for a rare kind of spectatorship”, wrote curator Mario Caeiro.
Lejman’s work has its roots in traditional painting, but goes far beyond its limits. With his unique technique, he combines the monochromatic and abstractly painted canvases with video projections. In this way, the artist introduces the factor of time: “painting with a time code”. Despite Lejman depriving both media of their autonomy, he considers this work as a pure painting process with the projector’s light seen as another layer of both brush and stroke. His murals–or “video- frescoes”–also derive from old tradition. Wall compositions in which, instead of paint, Lejman uses light projected directly on facades, or other surfaces of the public space.
In his latest series of works, the artist coherently follows his ‘modus operandi’ and seeks to focus on the tension between the individual and the socio-political environment that surrounds him. Lejman uses text as a visual dichotomy that abstracts the implication through combining it with its opposite meaning. The show will feature some new pieces that stem from a collaboration between the artist and contemporary poet Howard Altmann. “What interests me in this cooperation,” says Lejman, “is that I consider his poetry to be extremely sensitive to visual qualities”.
Lejman then uses his gestural brush strokes as a conveyor of sorts, in the same manner Jenny Holzer used her neo-conceptual texts in the 1980’s.