Upcoming

M O T E L

KolbuszSpace PERTH

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OPENS Fri 14 July: 6-8PM

VIEW Sat 15 July and Sun 16 July: 10-4PM

“This series of paintings are palpable intermissions simmering with a jostling, charged fragility. Large-scale and saturated, while their subjects are of foreign exterior places abroad, somewhere beyond the 129th meridian, their essence is about interior states: something amorphous, something incomprehensible.”

These are not just paintings that make us feel or reflect on serious or frivolous emotions; but works that enact a scepticism regarding the very experience of serious and frivolous emotions in themselves. Feelings are immeasurable. Does painting produce, capture, reflect or nullify them? In Kolbusz’s hands, the content leaks between limbo and surety; I am free to choose, I am no longer content.”

Excerpt from Diversions by Aimee Dodds, June 2023

All enquiries to hello@kolbuszspace.com

Image: Infinity, 2023. Oil on linen 153 x 138CM

F O T O A U T O M A T I C A

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KolbuszSpace PERTH

SEPT 2022

In Florence in 2018, I came across an old Fotoautomatica booth on the corner of via del’Agnolo and via Giuseppe Verdi which I later painted for my exhibition Near You in Sydney 2020.

I have continued to think about the booth’s automatic pull of nostalgia in the face of contemporary irrelevancy – and the danger of this in terms of my paintings.

While a selfie’s purpose may not be self-examination or an investigation into the moment, this avoidance has become a contemporary addiction. The paintings in this exhibition are about pulling back from an automation of fast images, fast feelings, manufactured moments and more carefully positing into a real experience.

I recently learned that the 1969 Fotoautomatica in Florence was not original but rescued from the Soviet Union, restored to its original form, and installed by set designer Matteo Sani in 2011.

Contact hello@kolbuszspace.com for enquiries

Image: Italian. 2022, oil on linen, 153 x 122cm

SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY 2022
8 – 11 September 2022

w/ Gallerysmith

Contact marita@gallerysmith.com.au to register interest

Image: Vacant. Oil on linen, 122 x 153cm

LOVE IS BACK

Gallerysmith, MELBOURNE
May 2022

Excerpt by Harry Sanderson:

LOVE IS BACK by Waldemar Kolbusz presents in a climate of emotional maximalism, in which romance and joy are oversaturated and oversold to the extent that whatever original sensations might have existed, are now replaced. Relationships are mined for their honeymoon periods, then thrown away. The sensation of enjoyment begins to feel more of an appeal: I am in love.

If you have ever had relatively meaningless sex with someone you appeared to be obsessed with only recently, you should recognise the husk of attachment I’m talking about. The exhibition isolates these tensions, considering which impressions might be truly our own.

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Image: Paramount. 2022, oil on linen 183 x 153cm

NOW

KolbuszSpace, PERTH
May 2021

New works concerning experiences we may all share, or want to share in contemporary everydayness, with consideration of the increasingly blurred difference between what we actually experience and what we convince ourselves (and others) we think should be the case.

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Image: Clear. 2021, oil on linen 183 x 183cm

SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY 2021 | EXPLORE

Nov 2021

w/ Gallerysmith

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Image: Even. 2020, oil on linen 122 x 153cm

REALLY

.MContemporary, SYDNEY
Oct 2021

These new works test the differences between an idealised human experience and actual experience – the increasingly blurred overlap between the two in our contemporary lives. Do we only experience how we think we’re supposed to experience?

Am I sold feelings, later imagined to be my own? In my figurative works I try to paint our vulnerabilities when we question what is real and what may be gloss. Someone once said to me that using that gloss without falling prey to it is a fine edge.

My expressionistic works explore this same fine edge, they allude to a kind of perfection, but then to something else.

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Image: Almost. 2020, oil on linen 183 x 183cm

Sydney Contemporary presents 2020
Oct 2020

w/ Gallerysmith

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Image: Ride. 2020, oil on linen 153 x 153cm

NEAR YOU

.MContemporary, SYDNEY
Oct 2020

This series of works further investigates the overlap between my two streams of works. Near You is about the interplay between chance and identity – the similarities in experiences we may share and the disconnect in others, the randomness of that, and how it shapes who we become.

I continue to be interested in exploring  points of change within my painting process in my abstractions, to pinpoint exactly when less considered marks come together and change from something of a mess to something more resolved, or when a surrender to chance can result in something more ordered.

I have always been obsessive about order and the degree to which we are all challenged in our daily lives between it and mess. Both the big picture and small detail of that draws me in.

In my figurative works these themes continue but in relation to experiences in my life and my art career, and how these shape who I am and how I relate to you. A lot of these chance moments which could allow clarity in all of this, of course happen during travels or outside our daily momentum.

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Image: Near You. 2020, oil on linen 183 x 183cm

FOR THE CHANCE OF IT

Gallerysmith, MELBOURNE
May 2020

With a practice that alternates between abstract and more figurative painting, Waldemar Kolbusz’ works come naturally charged with a high energy. His large brightly coloured canvases pulsate and move, allowing a rich visual engagement. Kolbusz has always worked in a fluid way, often resolving numerous paintings simultaneously. Whilst a significant shift in thinking is required for different genres, his cerebral approach allows him to do both. It informs and nourishes the work; allowing freedom in the figurative works and giving shape to the abstract.

For the chance of it explores the overlaps present in Kolbusz practice and the role that chance plays in his work. It is his debut exhibition at Gallerysmith.

Marita Smith, Director

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Image: Looking. 2020, oil on linen 183 x 122cm.