Natalia Załuska: Breaking Open Reduction

Breaking Open Reduction is Natalia Załuska‘s (b.1984, Cracow) first solo exhibition at Galerie Klüser 2 in Munich.

The artit’s compositions manifest a complex engagement with form and materiality and evidence her particular interest in textures and the effects of colours.
With great sensitivity, geometric shapes made from carboard – with different sizes and forms – are placed adjacently or in overlapping layers, like construction components. The artist makes the separate modules react to one another and enter into reciprocal interplay. In this context, the clear and simple structures, the so-called primary structures that dominate the works, are broken up by means of material experiments. Załuska collages, tears, paints over, and varnishes layer after layer, and so composes the painting as far as the surface. This artisanal process means that several layers are visible in some places.

They offer some insight into the complexity of the work and also visualise the dynamics immanent in its process of genesis. Rapid brush strokes, gleaming areas of varnish, splattered paint, rough, broken and unfinished areas of cardboard create an exciting play of contrasts on a picture carrier.
Załuska does work with a wider spectrum of colours, but the dominant surface colour is either black or white. Other shades only appear in the cracks. This concentration on one colour shade again enables the artist to underscore the impression of simplification and reduction.
Załuska’s interest lies in her handling of structure and in sounding out its possibilities. Minimal transformations alter the perception of an entire composition. And so Załuska creates variety and allows her works to pass through numerous calculated developments. In the process they gain or lose two-dimensionality or depth, grow inward or outward, become concentrated and abstract or simplified and clear. The effect is dependent on the perspective, the light, the focus: means with which Załuska achieves the maximum of multilayering within her minimalism.