Jacek MarkusiewiczBarbarians

Markusiewicz’s architectural background informs his artistic practice. The artist uses programming in data analysis and to generate formal and spatial solutions in building, urban, and furniture design. Markusiewicz creates generative art influenced by this practice, writing algorithms to generate visual images.

Barbarians is the next stage in the evolution of the artist’s work and develops ideas explored in the series Hollow (2022) and Cantera (2023) Hollow is a collection of 256 generative art editions inspired by an unrealised project by Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida. Chillida intended to carve out a vast cave within Tindaya, a mountain on the island of Fuerteventura. In Hollow, Markusiewicz imagines the presence of the human figure within such a monumental void. The figures within these spaces are tiny, the smallness of humankind emphasised by vast and vaulted echoing space. Cantera continues the artist’s investigation into the visual excavation of the landscape. In this body of work, images inspired by aerial photographs of Basque stone quarries and iron mines which are interspersed with architectural structures; digital traces of humanity’s footprint distorting the natural landscapes.

Barbarians continues the artist’s exploration of the body in relation to space and humanity in relation to nature. In this series, expansive monochromatic landscapes are scored by geometric forms that emerge from, and recede into, the land. They allude to the vastness of nature as overwhelming and inscrutable. Markusiewicz’s landscapes are at once familiar and alien.

Interspersed in this panorama are roads, crop fields and wooden buildings, evidence of a human presence. In juxtaposing industrial patterns with pastoral motifs, Barbarians explores the idea of nature as territory. Markusiewicz asks what came first: the colossal architectural forms or the small settlements. Does one constitute the coloniser and the other the colonised? Who are the ‘Barbarians’? Perhaps these immense structures trace a new stage of technological or industrial development across the earth’s surface. In Barbarians, Markusiewicz creates lyrical and enigmatic landscapes imbued with possibility.