LandE scape
Karol Kochanowski
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW
wanted to stay truthful to the nature of my practice. It doesn’ t matter if your work gets rejected; your work is authentic as you stayed yourself while doing it. It paid off; later, two paintings of this series also got selected for second leg of the show, Colonize Revisited as a part of Liverpool Biennial 2014.
The Second Return Of The Giant Hogweed was a definitive attempt to come back to landscape character of my pre university surreal illustrations. At first I had this quick sketch of a half abstract space, kind of tribute to fascinating The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosh. As in Wondrous Nightmare of Acclimatization series, again I let my hand to decide where I will end up with this unknown space sketching as a starting point. As I was interested in environmental issues and how our human kind disrespects the nature, my painting gained more natural, earthy qualities. The cherry on the cake was a title. Whenever I can, I try to give a vent to my surreal sense of humor, titling my work is the moment. By the time, there has been a lot of talk in the media about fast spreading around Europe, dangerous for human, Giant Hogweed plant. I had on my mind lyrics of prog rock band Genesis classic The Return Of The Giant Hogweed. The song was telling a story of phototoxic Giant Hogweed plant being imported to XIX century Britain as an ornament
plant. None was expecting it to be deadly for human; song’ s lyrics describe this plant as Mother Nature’ s weapon. A suggestion by my fellow artist, The Second Return Of The Giant Hogweed became an obvious choice for the title.
The brushstrokes that condense your visual vocabulary have a very ethereal quality. How do you view the concepts of the real