MONROE — The artwork of contemporary American painter Gabe Pionkowski is exhibit in the Monroe Arts Center’s Wellington and Muranyi Galleries from Jan. 29, 2021 through April 9. Pionkowski is a visual artist based in Madison.

Pionkowski earned his MFA and MA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a BA in Art Education from Bethany College, Lindsborg, Kansas, after studying in Italy at the Florence University of the Arts. Pionkowski has been awarded residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and the Millay Colony of the Arts in Austerlitz, New York. He was a Milton and Sally Avery Endowed Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2016.

“My paintings are made by deconstructing canvas thread by thread, hand painting each thread, and reconstructing them on a traditional handloom,” Pionkowski said. “The majority of the work presented in this exhibition has focused on painting back onto the newly constituted plane. These marks divide the surface laterally and penetrate to mark the backside. In an attempt to bring forward what has sunk, the canvas is cut, each strip folded along a central axis, and woven into itself. The result are paintings that holds themselves in a precarious state between the initial subject and that which, although constituted as itself is also beyond; between certainty and uncertainty, unison and chaos.”

The central question driving his process is something along the lines of “how to paint nothing?” Over many years, this question led him to directly engage with the subjectile (the canvas; theoretically, that which allows painting to be visible). It is an attempt to create a process that touches this “void”. 

“Although, at times, the paintings are very full, I strive for the process to constantly double back on itself allowing the paintings to declare themselves as an entity whose primary function is engaging in a constant play of hide and seek,” Pionkowski said. “I also think about how the figure plays within trace of my paintings (deconstruction, reconstruction, marks, cuts, folds). Recently, I have been extending this play to the viewer by using other materials and, or, presentation techniques. For example, ‘Fall into Me’ utilizes blind nails to create the suggestion of a meditative bed. ‘In the Act’ brings the painting off the wall, allowing the viewer to traverse the recto and verso. The most recent painting ‘/chiaroscuro/’ is a very dim journey into ‘infinity.’”