[All] in the Details

Miles Stemp

Patrick Krzyzanowski’s work is intricate, time consuming and very detailed.  He works a lot and you can tell that from the images: they are labour intensive and executed with such finesse and fervor that it’s hard not to love them.  I can only imagine spending that amount of time on one image, making hours in the studio seem like minutes.

Krzyzanowski uses machismo Americana imagery and couples it with the Sunday painter aesthetic of watercolour.  This technique throws the viewer off, so much so that you forget what you are looking at and are just drawn into the image.  Because the subject and materials are seamlessly unified, it seams to be saying that machismo can be dainty and delicate and the Sunday painter can be a bad-ass motha.  Yet Krzyzanowski doesn’t subscribe to either one, nor does he play favorites.  Whether it’s wrestling or baseball, watercolours or line drawings, he treats them as equals, both on the same playing field.

That being said, let’s not forget that these drawings are, plainly put, incredibly funny, which makes them accessible to audiences that are not so immersed in theory.  Even the names themselves are straightforward and funny. Baseball Pile #2 for example is a title that says what it is, a pile of baseball players.  But once you look closer at the painting, you realize that both teams are celebrating together, they had a tie game.  This unified celebration of togetherness references utopianism and futurism that talk of sports and life where no one wins and no one looses.  It’s like baseball when you were a kid, everyone goes home with a trophy and participation ribbon, “thanks for coming out.”

In short, for those who like a good painting, you can appreciate Krzyzanowski’s work for the technical skill involved, or if you like a good joke, you can get into it through the humor.  You can also be moved by the theory, for those who like a good socio-cultural investigation of sport, machismo, and the homoeroticism that belies it.  Or, you can just enjoy the hell out of it, for those who like enjoying. Krzyzanowski’s work has it all.

Titles:

Baseball Pile #2

Untitled (Circle)

Untitled (Square)

Untitled (Triangle)

Your anonymous comment may be printed in The Ontarion's print publication.