Maciejowski’s painted reproductions confront and surprise the viewer, moving beyond pure, representative realism to evoke a sense of disruption and fragmentation: a visitor’s head in front of the painted subject or an event occurring just beyond the frame. Introducing slanting perspectives and unexpected crops, Maciejowski creates tension between the directness of his representation and the viewer’s experience of each work, alluding to the tensions between forms of painted or photographic representation, whereby the image’s power to reveal or conceal simultaneously merges and collides. 

Executed in charcoal and drawing upon his technical skill as an illustrator, the works on paper on display demonstrate Maciejowski’s unique awareness of tone and form, while the sensitive paring down or flattening of his subjects attests to his deft penmanship and echoes the gestural brushstrokes of the larger, painted works. Depicting moments from daily life, Maciejowski’s drawings imbue the mundane with significance and distil potency in their emptiness.

I was fascinated by the repetition, which takes on a rhythm. This is also the source of my fascination with face types – each painter paints them differently, everyone creates their own vision of the oval of a woman’s face. I analysed Klimt’s by repetition and painted nine of his drawings of Friederike Maria Beer. What is important here is how the face is drawing, using just a few lines. The index painting has only the backgrounds – the paper of these drawings, reflecting their authentic colours. ­– Marcin Maciejowski, 2019 

Maciejowski's work is represented in distinguished public collections, including the Belvedere, Vienna; Volpinum Kunstsammlung, Vienna; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Foundation, Vienna; Museum der Moderne, Salzburg; MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakow; Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; SCHAUWERK Sindelfingen, and Burger Collection, Berlin. The National Museum in Krakow held a comprehensive solo exhibition of Maciejowski's work in 2010, followed by solo shows at Ostdeutsche Galerie, Regensburg the same year and the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead in 2013.