Samuel Paučo – Teserakt

In the exhibition Teserakt Samuel Paučo presents his established painting methods and concepts - on large-format canvases you will find abstract spatial landscapes processed by expressive layering of paint and collage techniques, geometrization, overpainting and work with painter's tape, which are characterized by earthy color tones. In his most recent painting series to date, the artist explores the theme of transparencies in the imaginary spaces of the painted backdrops, and develops further the possibilities offered by the painting medium and visuality.

Here he moves from his previous series of masks to an intuitive exploration of their shape and associative possibilities - the masks are still present, but spatially ambiguous, their clear shape disappearing or vibrating and dissolving under different perspectives. By zooming in, zooming out, rotating, curving, undulating, permeating or even looking out from inside the mask, Paučo achieves the captivating effect of dynamic movement of the pictorial surface. The iconic character of the mask escapes, transforms, the form undulates, collapses, penetrates other spatial plans, changes its arrangement, acquires new groupings, and is often indicated by a single aperture - the eye and its shadow. This fascinating play with shape and visuality results in compositions that are almost musical, surprising in their improvisational possibilities.

The inaugural image of the new series is M 22nd from 2024. It is the only representation of a figure in the series on view, and it is from a bird's-eye view, with a dominant open aperture of an imaginary head. On the impenetrable layer of paint in and around the head space we find collage-like fragments of matter - they may represent things like thoughts, memories, opinions or beliefs of different colour spectrums. Here we peer into the structure of our minds and can discern with the artist what we carry with us as individuals, what we believe, what we pay attention to, what games we play, how we make decisions, what we have and what we don't and why.

The title of the exhibition is derived from the idea of the tesseract in the science fiction film Interstellar. In the film, it is a multi-dimensional cube that the protagonist falls into, which contains infinitely repeating moments of reality. In this dimension, which is represented by a library, the non-linear nature of time enters into the idea of our three-dimensional space - the protagonist sees events from the past, can move in the timeline and interact with the 3D world through gravity. In the moment of direct observation of a moment in time, however, it is impossible to change one's own past. From this perspective, Pauč's image cycle can be seen as a peculiar attempt to construct a space in which the curvature of space-time and the effect of gravity disappear - signs, objects and landscape motifs levitate and the laws of physics are transcended.