2023 Mads Mikkelsen

Papers inspired by Mads Mikkelsen dance in the movie 'Another Round' reminds me about the iconic Zorba The Greek dance. 

In her painterly stories about the body, Mierzejewska often uses the language of painterly calligraphy, which can be found in many of her works – she builds up forms with soft, free strokes of broad brushes, with the movements of the brush, which leaves a colourful mark on the canvas (or other support), having a clear beginning and end. This method is particularly evident in the painterly works on paper, such as in the 2018 Octopus blue series, where the body becomes a mysterious, almost abstract painterly mark painted in navy blue on a blue background that only partially covers the territory of the cardboard. In the exquisite Octopus Men triptych (2022), painted on dark paper, the artist creates a synthetic image of a man's back with two or three brushstrokes. Painterly calligraphies ‘written’ in white acrylic paint on black paper can also be found in the excellent 2023 series. Z Man, Z Star and Zorba, in which the human silhouette is reduced to a sign. The works in the Zorba series seem to provide ready-made visual material for a multimedia animation, evoking the famous cinematic dance motif.

© 2024 XY ANKA MIERZEJEWSKA