OKNO

THK Gallery announces the first Solo Exhibition by Katarzyna (Kasia) Stefanczyk, OKNO (Window in Polish), a new sequence of light paintings by Cape Town-based Katarzyna (Kasia) Stefanczyk (b. 1992 Warsaw, Poland). OKNO is a record of Stefanczyk's exploration of time, light and shadow, taking note of the infinite forms their interplay produces.

According to the artist, 'Light Paintings are records of light as it falls through an architecture onto a surface on a given day at a specific time. The paintings set out to seize the ever-changing forms generated by light as it moves across the day, onto objects, and into space. In this body of work, my studio becomes the lens, a frame, and my limitation.'

The enquiry started as a photographic exercise and evolved into painting. She depicts abstract patterns denoting the movement of light through her studio space window resulting in a range of paintings coming in three distinct forms, two of them based on contrasting tonal range, and the other in thin lines almost resembling an architectural plan. The artist names the artworks based on the date and time she started the painting to the date and time she made the last mark, turning minutes into weeks or months of contemplative compositions.

Stefanczyk is influenced by her fascination with architecture, shadows, and light. Through the window of her studio, she paints the movements of light on a building being renovated, carefully noting the shift in patterns of the light and shadows across the day.

In Light Painting 14 February 2023, 9:15am - 1 March 2023, 9:52am, 2023, and Light Painting 10 March 2023, 8:59am - 25 March 8:25am, 2023, layers of sharp and defined geometric shapes are tectonically stacked, resembling the balancing of one mass on another. However, because they are of such a narrow tonal range and have softer outlines, the top layers allow us to see through their supposed solidity, revealing what lies beneath.

In Shadow Painting 8 April 2023, 12:02pm - 16 April 12:58pm, 2023, and Shadow Painting 15 April 2023, 12:26pm - 18 April 12:19pm, 2023, Stefanczyk deploys a palette of  black oil paint and graphite onto the raw linen ground, marking the travel of shadows through the passage of time. The shadows are of a sharp tonal range resulting in pronounced vertical and diagonal shapes and forms

Light Painting 10 April 2023, 11:08am - 12:11pm, 2023, and Light Painting 21 April 2023, 10:59am - 12:23pm, 2023 echoes the sinewy lines of an architectural drawing use of graphite allows the artist to make fine thin lines, albeit thicker than pencil marks. Also visible on the surface of the works are the markings of the times at which the artist captured the movement of light through lines on a single day.

The core of Stefanczyk’s practice is an attent observation of these liminal, sub-perceptual, yet constantly shifting occurrences. What intrigues the artist is the challenge of manually transferring them to canvas. “I am attempting to document these essentially temporal arrangements of light, shadows and reflections and the tracking of the day across space and place. In making these works, I seek order in the observation of these intricately layered compositions” she explains.