EXHIBITION / Paweł Kowalewski / Failure of Reason / Mazovian Centre for Contemporary Art “Elektrownia”

Kowalewski’s exhibition The Failure of Reason encompasses artworks created within the last seven years. It includes not only paintings but also sculptures, installations and works made with the use of photography. Kowalewski’s work is extremely diverse in terms of genres – it includes painting on canvas and paper, photography, sculpture, NFT, installations and ready-mades.

Characteristic for his style are conceptual and Dadaist commentaries and titles which the artist has given to his works from the beginning of his artistic activity. In his art, each artwork has a profound meaning, it is a commentary on reality, a reference to a literary text, personal life or history. The artist keenly watches absurdities and threats to the contemporary reality, and is not afraid to ask difficult questions through his art.

The exhibition presents pictures created in the years 2019–2014, inter alia a vast series Objects, in which the artist provocatively declares that his canvases are not paintings but objects and ostentatiously inserts them in decorative frames, whose style is far from the one currently encountered in exhibitions of contemporary art. At the Elektrownia you can also see the artist’s other artworks which escape easy classification.

The work which inspired the title of the exhibition is the installation Contempt for Reason – a brain levitating in space, made of Sterling silver and set with sapphires. The artist asks questions: Do we, contemporary society, hold reason in contempt? Has the era of reason given way to the era of applause? The exhibition also shows Kowalewski’s latest paintings and installations which so far have never been presented anywhere.