“Scratch Cards” Michal Zaborowski

Posted on April 14, 2010 by unit24

SCRATCH CARDS
Michal Zaborowski’s selection of recent interactive paintings

The inspiration for this exhibition came from lottery scratch cards.
The viewer is invited to scratch off parts of the painting to reveal the image.

PRIVATE VIEW 9 June 2011 6pm-9:30pm,
OPENING TIMES Mon-Wed: 8am-5pm Thu-Fri: 8am-6:30pm Admission Free

Scratch cards, lottery coupons hide their key information under a layer of paint or foil. To read this information you must remove the paint. At this moment you accept the rules that govern the game.

This formula has inspired Michal Zaborowski to create a series of paintings using the same principle.
The content of paintings refers to iconographic stereotypes often found in Western culture.
By using this idea Zaborowski tries to restore the old iconic meanings and infuse them with a new contemporary context of the 21st century’s culture, He understands that under the visual references of hidden philosophical and religious messages, there is an old essence of meaning. The meaning of which in his work becomes current and contemporary.
The artist said: “When I was painting pictures I turn away from the literal and historical aspects, trying to give them a contemporary character”. He understands that the problem of todays viewer and his/hers growing inability to read the content – to get to the bottom of the meaning.
The images were painted during specially set up photographic sessions. All models are friends who agreed to participate in this project giving it an authentic and personal character.
The principle of scratch cards will be used to expose these works. Some parts of the painted images will be covered with artificial gold flakes and some fragments of images will be exposed, suggesting the theme of the picture. This treatment is referring to the icons and Byzantine art.
The viewers of the exhibition will have the opportunity to scrape away some parts of the images which are required to complete a full interpretation of the painting. They will actively participate in the process of revealing the unknown, covered and restricted parts hidden by the artist.
Zaborowski provokes the audience to participate in this process and he hopes that this may be intriguing, annoying or provoking sheer curiosity.
“My intention is to highlight the though that sometimes the recipient must make some effort – in this case also the physical – to reveal the essence of content. At the same time I imagine that the paintings will be scraped with a different intensity and in different places. This will allow me to follow the way people watch paintings. I wonder which parts will stay hidden just because they will be “less” important for the viewer to scratch them off. It is interesting to me at what point the audience participating in this process decide to leave the image as a completed work. I realise that by active participation in the process of scratching off gold foil the viewer will became a co-creator of the final image”.
Michal Zaborowski was born in Poland in 1960. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Art in Warsaw. He started his career in 1986 and received the scholarship “Pallottines General of the Order of the Fathers” in Rome. His work has been exhibited in various places in the world and it was sold to many private collections.

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