Interview : Lukasz Pazera       

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IA: Your paintings often depict barren or lonely places, why is that?

LP: It's all about atmosphere to me. I have this thing for lonely and maybe a bit dangerous environments. I can’t explain why but I am more sensitive and responsive to this sort of atmosphere, much more than I am to other themes. I do not force myself to create an agenda for my art; I would never say, “I'm going to be a ‘lonely places’ artist,” rather it’s the other way around. I try to match visuals with what I want to get across in the best way possible. Today, these are abandoned places. Maybe in 10 years I'll find something else that works better, but I think that the overall feeling will remain more less the same.

IA: How would you describe you work?

LP: I actually had to describe my work not so long ago for an artist's statement for a gallery where I display my original acrylics paintings. It was tough since I prefer to create and let the art speak for itself, as I think most artists do. To put it short: I'm attracted to creating worlds in which places or objects are much stronger characters than humans and I like show it in cinematic way. I'll leave the rest for you to interpret.

IA: Do you think your work is often close to abstract researches?

LP: I'd be very happy if it was. I’ve always had problems with the more abstract approach. I would start an image that I was very happy with in the beginning and that looks quite abstract but somewhere along the way I would go into too many details and the picture would turn out more realistic than I wanted it to be. The problem was I couldn't control whether I wanted it more abstract or real.

I have recently had a few people tell me that my graphics/paintings look almost like abstract art and that is a great compliment to me. Not that I want to become an abstractionist but I think it gives me confirmation that I actually made some progress with building my own artistic language and I have more control over my creative process. I love details but you don't always need them. Sometimes a simple image can be even more powerful as you have more range between loose and more detailed areas. A hint of something can be way more stimulating to the imagination then perfect depiction.




























IA: What are you favorite sources of influence?

LP: I could name a few. My everlasting inspiration is music for sure. A lot of my works are inspired by music. For example, my Smell of Rain series was influenced a lot by the music of Mortiis. My dream job would probably be doing music videos to my favorite tracks, though that’s an impossible plan.

Right now I'm totally into the zone concept from Roadside Picnic, a book by the Strugatsky brothers and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Those two things go together for me. I'm making a series of images titled Postcards from the Zone with the aforementioned lonely places as the main characters. I hope to make an exhibition out of it one day when the number of works in the series is large enough. Visually, I take a lot from Eastern European, post communist landscapes; both natural and industrial ones. I tend to take a lot of pictures of those areas and add them to my library for reference.

And sometimes ideas come along accidentally. Quite recently I went out for lunch and saw a great construction site in London, not far from a place where I currently work. I got an idea for a picture instantly. I took some photos of this place and I'll see when they come in handy. Maybe it will become a next "Postcard form the Zone."