Arkadiusz RUCHOMSKI (b. 1978), Dialogue IV, 2007

oil, encaustic, canvas, board; 132 x 86 cm
Signed, dated and described on the back: ARuchomski / Dialogue IV from the series Coverings / 2007.

Studied at the Institute of Fine Arts, University of Zielona Gora, Faculty of Painting from 2001 to 2007. He defended his diploma in the painting studio of Prof. Stanisław Kortyka. Since 2008 he has been an assistant at the Faculty of Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in the studio of Prof. Hubert Borys. In 2005, he won the Grand Prix in the "2004 Picture of the Year" competition. He also participated in the Triennale of Polish Contemporary Painting at the BWA in Rzeszow, the Triennale of Painting at the Municipal Art Gallery in Czestochowa in 2007, and the International Biennale of Painting and Textile in Gdynia in 2011. In 2013, he won third place in the International Competition, "Contemporary Landscape" in Czestochowa. In 2005-2015, he participated in many solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad. [Biographical note from a solo exhibition at the Museum of Lubuskie Land in 2020].
"In Ruchomski's paintings there is peace, tranquility, silence and something unshakeable, as if constantly gazing into eternity. But this stillness and silence do not evoke in the viewer a feeling of passivity or inaction. This is highly speculative art. The painting is redefined here, it ceases to be a plane - a screen of flat patches of color, where the artist's most important realities are brushstrokes and tonal juxtapositions in themselves, not what they mean. Ruchomski's paintings become, once again, a window full of meanings and symbols. At first glance - a few boards, bark, porously primed fabric, which undergo transformation before our eyes - materialize into landscapes of another reality. At the same time, there is something of the all-encompassing baroque altarpieces entering scenographically
into the space of the walls, which themselves become part of the painting. By their irregularity, their inability to fit into rectangular frames, they appeal to irregular nature. They are OPEN LANDSCAPES teeming with an excess of life born in perpetual silence. In them we feel the order of the cosmic organism, the harmony through which the life of individual molecules in the boundless fullness of the universe is revealed. Each jar of wood a weave of canvas, a coarsening of paint offer a glimpse of this unity in multiplicity. Their interpretation remains open to our affection, emotionality and intellect. There is in them a mysticism similar to that which Jacob Boehme achieved 'for one blink' with the help of a sunbeam reflected from a sheet of metal to have a glimpse of the center naturae, there is in them the sacred, there is finally and above all art." [Catherine Haber]