Paweł Nowak, XXX series, 1997, from the Galeria Studio Collection

The series XXX consists of six wax reliefs on canvas substrates which can be divided into two sub-groups: three works with the dominant color of white, three of black. Each is characterized by a textural accretion, built up by a layering of drops and smears of wax of different hues.

Formally, the series is the artist’s response to strictly painterly challenges—an expression of his desire to achieve vibrant and luminous compositions based on the interplay of colors and textures of successive layers of painterly matter. The artist consciously avoids the term “installation” in the context of his wax works, suggesting that in the dialogue between painting and three-dimensional objects, it is the painting that always remains sacred to him.

The rich structure of the reliefs in the XXX series opens the viewer up to the symbolism possible in the process of layering—a motif that, in other wax cycles, the artist has associated with the building up of life experience and transience.

Martyna Wilkowska