Rob Katkowski

Robert Katkowski is fascinated with non-visible phenomena. Being a visual artist, this may seem unusual, but he finds that pictures have the potential to be more expressive and informative than conventional language, especially concerning these things unseen. For example, Katkowski is interested in how natural forces sculpt a mountain into what we recognize as a mountain. There are certain forces at work all around us that we can't sense. We have no sense of the earth continually shifting under our feet due to plate tectonics or the earth moving at high speeds through space. Katkowski thinks it's amazing that such monumental forces are constantly shaping our universe and we are not aware of them. He believes that if you could see through the top layer of reality, then some of these forces could be perceived. Sometimes in his work, for example, a recognizable landscape acts as a shell that crumbles away to reveal what he imagines these forces to look like. In other work, a rendered lake surface may lead you underground into a cross section where your eye travels through pockets of bizarre spaces.
Katkowski's work explores multiple spaces that exist on the same picture place. Some canvases are split up into different types of spaces, some have one space circling, bending around, or invading another, while other spaces open up to reveal hidden spaces. He tends to use contrasting techniques to clarify or obscure boundaries. Flat, two-dimensional shapes may overlap rendered, traditional space or vice versa. Also, the textural differences between impasto and thinly applied transparent layers of paint and subtractive techniques may delineate boundaries in interesting ways. A sky painted in impasto may overlap a thinly painted transparent landform at the horizon, or a scratched away line may cut into an area of what might be seen as think impasto foreground, pushing it back in space. It is through the dynamic process of painting that Katkowski's ideas take form and become most expressive.