The occasion for exhibiting Łukasz Stokłosa’s paintings at the Castle is the conservation work currently being carried out on Jan Matejko’s Sermon of Piotr Skarga. A shared fascination with the past connects both artists, allowing for an encounter between two painterly interpretations of history.
Stokłosa’s paintings function as a commentary on the historical painting that pervades the Castle’s walls. They invite us, as viewers, to reflect on the meaning and role of former seats of power. Interiors of Venice’s Ca’ Rezzonico, Charlottenburg, Fontainebleau, Versailles, the Royal Łazienki, or the Royal Castle are captured in photographic-like shots and transformed by Stokłosa into a painterly spectacle of emptiness and silence. Places once vibrant with courtly life, politics, entertainment, love, and intrigue become aesthetic specimens of the past, turned into museum spaces. Curatorially arranged, filled with precious objects and traces of former glory, they usually persist detached from their original meanings, coming to life only in the presence of tourists. The interiors and objects depicted by Stokłosa allow us to encounter a world that has passed, yet still remains significant to our sense of identity.