Currently showing at Cleopatra’s, a small art gallery (sidenote: here’s a brief story about its inception) tucked into a thin slice of space on a quiet stretch of Meserole, is an array of drawings by Poznań, Poland based artist Leszek Knaflewski, or, as he signs his drawings, Knaf. I’ll leave Cleopatra’s website to chronicle the lion’s share of the history of Knaf’s work, but it is important to recognize his work in the context of the collective with which he associated, Kolo Klipsa.
The works on display at Cleopatra’s utilize a number of quotidian images – boxy, stereotypical houses, basic furniture, trees, cats, and so forth – run through Knaf’s surreal imagination before being drawn out. It reminded me of images that you may hold in your mind of half-remembered places and people to which you ascribe dreamlike qualities to make up for a lack of actual details. Did the vase look like the cat, or did the cat look like the vase? Simple inversions in elements of even the most basic drawings, as in the work pictured above, add a depth to images that far exceeds their composition.
Knaflewski’s work will be on display at Cleopatra’s (110 Meserole Avenue) until May 27.
I also went to the show and it’s one of my favorite shows I have seen in Greenpoint in a while. The space is tiny, claustro and sweaty, but if you wait everyone out, eventually there was about 20 people standing outside, then it’s a nice intimate space to look at artwork that you really want to stick your nose in. We did about 3-4 walks around the room and each time saw new things in each work. I like how technically undeveloped the artist’s hand is, it adds to the imaginative and emotional connection I had with the work. A swans head inside-out on a man’s shoulder will never really be that so why draw it to perfection? I might stalk the show a few more times.