Teresa del Conde, director, Museo de Arte Contemporario, Mexico City
September, 2002
I remember with pleasure the visit I made to Steve Cieslawski's studio in Oaxaca some months ago. He was preparing his current exhibition taking place in New York and I had the opportunity not only of seeing the paintings to be presented, but also of listening to his methods and techniques. Some time before, I had been impressed by two of his works I had seen in a large exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Oaxaca, Mexico. I enjoyed those pieces very much because I considered them really - pictorially and iconographically very interesting.
His scenarios are mysterious and at the same time quite real. I have in mind Theater of Memory in which perspective legitima - as the painters of Florentine Renaissance used to call the method they discovered - is the main feature. Perspective is used very poetically in this and in other paintings I saw. In this one, the eye of the viewer meets a point, which is inside the dark classical arch at the end of the corridor. This is an interior scene with personages and the light is well achieved.
In contrast, the painting called Change of Seasons is an exterior scene and the two presences seem to dialogue just when the sunset takes place.
Cieslawski loves to recreate architecture, as in the properly titled Flight of the Architect. I found this piece a bit comical because of the enormous caryatids with their raised arms. In a clever way, they set the proportion of the precinct in which the little figure of the man seems to hurry off right, while carrying the maquette of San Pietro in Montorio. He seems to be worried about possible colleagues who might steal his tempietto.
A Fateful Meeting is also very appropriately named, since it takes a few seconds before you realize that the meeting taking place is in Verona, involving the face of a Madonna staring at you with her only visible eye.
In a painting called Dream Catcher, Cieslawski depicts an angel from the Annunciation, The Salutation of the Angel to Mary, but no Mary is there, and her absence makes a very interesting play.
Some of the colors and settings used by the artist remind me of Caspar David Friedrich, who can be considered a forerunner of the late 19th century Symbolist Movement, while others are linked to Surrealism in many ways. One can see a relationship to the imagination of Remedios Varo, as well.
Cieslawski's skies are a result, I think, of a thorough observation of nature, and I love most of them. In Seer of Fates, the sky calls forth one of those skies which appear in Baroque painting whenever a saint has a revelation or has been visited by a Supernatural Being. We call this 'Rompimiento de Gloria' The Rupture of Glory. This effect is beautifully contrasted with the icy landscape.
Indeed, it is a joy to see paintings so carefully achieved with layers and layers and layers of pigment, as in the paintings by Vermeer of Delft. They are pleasant to the eye and to the mind. I wish the artist a great success with this exhibition.
September, 2002
I remember with pleasure the visit I made to Steve Cieslawski's studio in Oaxaca some months ago. He was preparing his current exhibition taking place in New York and I had the opportunity not only of seeing the paintings to be presented, but also of listening to his methods and techniques. Some time before, I had been impressed by two of his works I had seen in a large exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Oaxaca, Mexico. I enjoyed those pieces very much because I considered them really - pictorially and iconographically very interesting.
His scenarios are mysterious and at the same time quite real. I have in mind Theater of Memory in which perspective legitima - as the painters of Florentine Renaissance used to call the method they discovered - is the main feature. Perspective is used very poetically in this and in other paintings I saw. In this one, the eye of the viewer meets a point, which is inside the dark classical arch at the end of the corridor. This is an interior scene with personages and the light is well achieved.
In contrast, the painting called Change of Seasons is an exterior scene and the two presences seem to dialogue just when the sunset takes place.
Cieslawski loves to recreate architecture, as in the properly titled Flight of the Architect. I found this piece a bit comical because of the enormous caryatids with their raised arms. In a clever way, they set the proportion of the precinct in which the little figure of the man seems to hurry off right, while carrying the maquette of San Pietro in Montorio. He seems to be worried about possible colleagues who might steal his tempietto.
A Fateful Meeting is also very appropriately named, since it takes a few seconds before you realize that the meeting taking place is in Verona, involving the face of a Madonna staring at you with her only visible eye.
In a painting called Dream Catcher, Cieslawski depicts an angel from the Annunciation, The Salutation of the Angel to Mary, but no Mary is there, and her absence makes a very interesting play.
Some of the colors and settings used by the artist remind me of Caspar David Friedrich, who can be considered a forerunner of the late 19th century Symbolist Movement, while others are linked to Surrealism in many ways. One can see a relationship to the imagination of Remedios Varo, as well.
Cieslawski's skies are a result, I think, of a thorough observation of nature, and I love most of them. In Seer of Fates, the sky calls forth one of those skies which appear in Baroque painting whenever a saint has a revelation or has been visited by a Supernatural Being. We call this 'Rompimiento de Gloria' The Rupture of Glory. This effect is beautifully contrasted with the icy landscape.
Indeed, it is a joy to see paintings so carefully achieved with layers and layers and layers of pigment, as in the paintings by Vermeer of Delft. They are pleasant to the eye and to the mind. I wish the artist a great success with this exhibition.