On Aleksandra Zawada

Sometimes it is the people who no-one thinks anything of, who do the things that no-one can think of.

It has always been true that artists who do anything that is eventually worth anything, have to come to terms, in their art, with what’s come before them.

What this really means is sorting out in their own minds what exactly it is that matters most to them in the art that has come before, because they have to somehow accommodate it in their own art. This isn’t necessarily a conscious process, nor one that always happens easily, or quickly.

By accommodate I mean absorb, come to terms with, even confront. In AZ’s case, for example, one of these artists might be Cy Twombly, not least because so much of Twombly’s painting consists of drawing. Not much in AZ’s art superficially resembles Twombly’s painting, and neither is it anything like on the scale of Twombly’s. At the same time its raw, uningratiating look, its unconcern with finish, the immediacy of its drawing and inventiveness of its forms are all qualities in common with Cy Twombly’s early painting. AZ’s painting would, in fact, infinitely benefit by being on the scale of Twombly’s. Right now it remains modest in scale – though not modest as art. (It’s perhaps significant that like Twombly, AZ has also made bodies of work in sculpture and photography.) AZ’s work could not contrast more with the polished, sophisticated work produced by her peers at college, anxious (whether they knew it or not) to comply with the market-oriented imperatives of academic art school convention. AZ’s work so far seems quite outside all that, as genuinely original work always is - incapable of novelty or superficiality for the purposes of material gain.

It’s also true that original work almost always comes about in a difficult, halting way, full of false starts. This is even more so in a provincial situation, where there’s no institutional support, no real visual culture, little other contemporary painting of quality to look at, and no real market for serious and innovative painting. In this sense, the isolation of any really genuine artist is so crushing, and has always been so, that only the most determined character can survive it.

Sometimes it is the people who no-one thinks anything of, who do the things that no-one can think of.

Text written by Alan Shipway

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Yellow on Peach I, 2021

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Yellow on Peach II, 2021

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White on Navy, 1, 2018

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White on Navy, 2, 2018

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Gold on Navy, 3, 2019