Around the table, 1989

Pawel Lasik  

PAWE? LASIK (born in 1941)
He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where he graduated from the atelier of Professor Artur Nacht-Samborski in 1967. Currently, he is a professor of this academy. His works have been exhibited, among others in Warsaw, Paris, Orence, Lyon, Sofia, Vigo, Zaragoza, Munich, Berlin, Copenhagen, Dusseldorf, Brema, Tel Aviv, Athens, Nafplio, and London. They are to be found in the collections of National Museum in Warsaw, Regional Museums in Olsztyn, Przemysl, Opole, and Sandomierz and in numerous collections in Poland and abroad.
The world of Lasik’s paintings is not a journey to distant lands existing only in some vivid imagination. There are no idealised visions pleasant to look at and longed for by the soul. The encounter with Lasik’s reality in not easy. It does not bring Odyssey for the soul that longs for a better reality, an Arcadia that exists only in the sphere of imagination. No. Pawel Lasik invites us to worlds that are familiar, for which the centre of attention, tragedy and comedy is a local courtyard. Blocks of flats, playgrounds and dustbins are a theatre of real dramas and the commonness of these places is ennobled by the artist to the rank of a true and serious theme, a problem which focuses the interest and artistic search of the painter. The world of Lasik’s paintings, which seems to radiate with overwhelming ugliness, deformity and imperfection, is charming after a brief moment. The porte-parole, collective hero of many of his paintings is a Human Being. A Human, who deserves admiration and interest not because being beautiful and strong, but imperfect, even more – often even far away from correctness, often lost but constantly trying to figure out the life. That is why when I look upon Lasik's paintings I feel I am touching not only the deepest secret of painting, but also a mystery of existence.
Katarzyna Napiórkowska