Zbigniew Rogalski is a painter, or rather a director of paintings, as he moves with great ease both in the regions of painting and photography, mixing them and taking advantage of both disciplines. Reflexes, after-images, film stills and photographs all overlap the image of reality, as if in a specially constructed optic machine which retains on the surface of the canvas the emotions and meanings which normally are no more permanent than a drawing on a steamed-up glass. A number of his works allude to the classic genres of painting, such as portrait or landscape. However, by interweaving different clichés and conventions of representation, Rogalski is led to surprisingly essential painterly solutions which make the tradition of this medium interesting again. He succeeds in restoring a visionary element in painting and does it in a very suggestive manner. The surface of the painting becomes for a short while a screen on which the obsessions, fear and revelations of our consciousness are being displayed. This is first and foremost the painting of imagination. It does allow for a non-reflective consumption of the visual world, but continuously leads us to the final and elusive matters. Sometimes it is beautiful, sometimes it is scary, but there are moments, as in the paintings from the "Death of Partisan" series, that these two emotions blend into one.
