The exhibition Burnt Black by Lech Twardowski presents the artist’s latest paintings, in which tension is captured directly in the painterly matter. These works do not speak of energy so much as condense it – they record its trace in the structure of the surface, turning the canvas into a field of real impact.

For years, Twardowski has consistently built his own language around the concepts of energy, process, and the material presence of a work. The starting point for these new projects remains the previously developed logic of works from the Generators and Empty – Full series, where he explored the relationships between presence and absence, impulse and silence, construction and decay, form and its absence. In the Burnt Black series, these themes return but are condensed and reduced to an intense experience of the surface – as a field in which tension is not represented but actually present. 

The black canvases are saturated with chemicals that initiate the burning process, leaving traces that are both visually hypnotising and unsettling. The gesture ceases to be merely a record of expression; it shifts toward initiating an event. The artist creates conditions in which paint and ground interact, and the painting begins to unfold according to its own, partially unpredictable logic.

It is in this relationship – between control and its loss, decision and chance – that the exhibition’s fundamental tension arises. Matter does not act as a passive vehicle for form but becomes an active participant in the creative process: it spills, thickens, cracks, and eats into the structure of the canvas, leaving traces reminiscent of after-sights of explosion or burnout. The painting does not represent energy – it accumulates and reveals it. 

Burnt Black becomes a space of confrontation: between intention and process, between presence and disappearance, between what is planned and what happens beyond control. These are paintings created at a time when reality loses stability and begins to resemble a chain reaction – each impulse triggers the next, leaving a mark, like a burnout that cannot be reversed.

Lech Twardowski (born 1952) studied at the State Superior School of Fine Arts in Wrocław, in the painting studio of Professor Zbigniew Karpiński. In 1983, he moved to Paris and returned to Wrocław permanently in 1995. He practices painting, installation, and performance. He uses various techniques and media in his work, collaborates with musicians and is interested in theatrical space. He lives and works in Wrocław.