Daniel Marzona
Art Cologne 2017

What is connecting Aron Mehzion (1970, Asmara, Eritrea), Francesco Gennari (1973, Fano, Italy) and Piotr Makowski (*1985, Gdynia, Poland) is the experimental passion, the research, the fascination of science and art.

This combination is apparent in the works of Mehzion who studied for 20 years the physics of
mirror symmetry. Mehzion’s focus is on transformations which are beyond perception in the three-dimensional space. A fourth dimension is necessary.
The series of works thereby produced has fundamentally approached a four-dimensional perspective, possibly for the first time since Duchamp. Constitutive of his works is the use of semi-transparent mirrors. Placed between two mirror-image symmetrical figures, they permit perfect overlayings or interpenetrations of the mirror image of the one and the view of the other through the mirror. The surface of the mirror thus provides a glimpse that both reflects and penetrates.
Aron Mehzion’s mirrors let a world appear that cannot be entered, but which is nonetheless present in the realms of possibility of physics and mathematics.
His large-format drawings are similar to them. They consist of iterated drawn forms, each of which refers to physical presence, but whose repetition dissolves physical presence. They, too, intimate a perspective, dissolve surface and form, and challenge perception.

Piotr Makowski redefines painting by “decoding” its medium, experimenting forms on the flat surface with easy means of painting such as lines, surfaces, spots, color. His seemingly modern works (painting and drawings) do often refer to other styles through an apparent modernist approach, involving a reenactment of the recent main Art History streams such as the Polish and international avant-garde or Pop Art for instance.
The artist's constant interest towards the reinterpretation of the 20th century painting can be translated under a systematic deconstruction and reconstruction through the endless research for geometric and organic shapes. For Art Cologne 2017, Piotr Makowski proposes the arrangement of a new series of large-scale works based from the artist's numerous former sketches. Those sketches, made in the last few years with the techniques of watercolor and pencil on photographic paper or carbon transfer monochrome dry point drawings on paper, are intricately structured compositions mixing strong linear elements and color accents. Although this approach to composing preceded by sketching is very traditional, it reveals at the same time the artists' respect and fairly traditional approach to the matter of painting. This presentation is the summary of the last few years of work in which Makowski has been developing his “visual language” and vocabulary that combine the representation of formal aspects of painting, abstraction, linear draughtsmanship and gesturalism. Each work can however be read as a separate story, the arrangements of certain elements in some compositions can be associated with the anatomy of the human face.

This selection is completed with works by Francesco Gennari. The artist’s method consists of amalgamating material and spirit, geometry and metaphysics by adding organic matter to his geometric minimalistic-appearing objects and charge them spiritually with a cultic mythology.
„I feel myself to be an architect three times, in the sense of formal design, in the sense of conceptual design and in the sense of the redesign of the universe surrounding me.“
Thus Gennari focuses on creation myths, widely defining the world of art, without proceeding as an iridescent figure. He creates his objects in his mind, but all are manufactured by someone else.

Experiencing these artists’ experimental approach here are to be discovered limits and potentials of matter, physics, geometry, metaphysics and spirituality!