In workshop of Apelles XIII

The three photographs W pracowni Apellesa XI, XII, XIII (ca. 1984) are part of Mikołaj Smoczyński's best-known work – The Secret Performance, a series created in 1983-1993 in the studio of the Institute of Artistic Education of the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. Smoczyński studied painting; however, he quickly decided to try and create painting in context and through other media. First, he disassembled his paintings, unfinished or never painted, and combined their parts – canvas, frame elements – into two objects. This is how the Double Object (1980) was made, which started Smoczyñski's experiments with photography, without which the artist would not have started The Secret Performance. In the first works of this series, including the pieces featured in the collection of the National Museum in Szczecin, Smoczyński used elements of the Double Object. He was extremely precise in arranging the space and setting the frames, he made the final prints himself. For him, the creative process, from the birth of the idea for the piece, was equally as important as the end result. This is evidenced by his texts, recording his thoughts accompanying work on selected exhibitions – in the 1990s these were usually ephemeral installations created for a particular gallery spaces, as well as analytical and critical comments on his works written ex post.The title – W pracowni Apellesa – suggests a reference to the tradition of painting depicting the artist's studio, as well as showing a painting within a painting. Smoczyñski's black-and-white photographs, minimalist in form, constitute an in-depth reflection on the problem of painting and reality – what is defined as a painting and what is a part of reality?

Marlena Chybowska-Butler