David Kowalkowski

David Kowalkowski already exposed in 2006 together with his former teacher Marcel Berlanger at the gallery.

At that time he showed a series of oil paintings featuring a plane tree as subject. It was especially the texture of camouflage of this tree that attracted Kowalkowski. This approach was also the occasion to expose his works at the exhibition “Make-up/Camouflage” together with Eric Angenot and Martijn Schuppers in May 2006. The typical characteristics of colour and shape of the technique of camouflage are clearly present in the ever changing skin structure of the plane tree but they don’t serve the same purpose as the camouflaging in the kingdom of animals or in human warfare, since there they try to mislead the enemy by blending in invisibly with the rest of the environment. On the contrary, the multicoloured scaling make the plane trees stand out in the urban environment. In his series with the barks of the plane trees, the subject is only an alibi to celebrate the feast of painting in a libertine way. The texture of camouflage gave Kowalkowski the possibility to use all the techniques that the painter has at his disposition. The scaly skin of the plane tree is just an alibi for the displaying of the infinite pictorial possibilities. The paintings of Kowalkowski that are presently exposed at the gallery are of the same quality as the paintings with the plane trees but start from a different angle. Subject, use of colour, composition, etc…everything is different but painted with that same recognizable virtuosity. The choice of subject still situates itself in the urban environment but is transferred to more intimate, monochrome images wherein a little spider has become the main actor in a setting of domestic flora. The colourful abundance of the scaling has given way to a sober use of colour of blue tones such as were used in old photo prints but with nuances of sepia. Contrary to the earlier all-over compositions where the plane trees were central, Kowalkowski uses in a more recent series of paintings the little spider that plays an important part, an image dispersion that extends from the exterior to the middle. The context of his story now moves from the border of the picture to the airy space in the middle. Therein floats a spider centrally against a clear ‘background’. The spider web that it is making is at the same time the interior and exterior, it is its border, the demarcation of its domain. The spider has slunk into the image as a parasite of the landscape, of the idyll. It emerges from a dark world and erases feelings of fear and loathing. It nestles in the dreams and fantasies of the depression.

The paintings of Kowalkowski that he made in 2008 are of the same quality as the paintings with the plane trees but start from a different angle. Subject, use of colour, composition, etc…everything is different but painted with that same recognizable virtuosity. The choice of subject still situates itself in the urban environment but is transferred to more intimate, monochrome images wherein a little spider has become the main actor in a setting of domestic flora. The colourful abundance...