As a child, Polish painter Katarzyna Karpowicz, herself the daughter of artists, “started to communicate more with the language of drawing than normal language” For her, creating art “is something normal, like a part of the body” . Her work, which is influenced by figures from Giotto to de Chirico, is also infused by her love of cinema and theatre. The characters of her paintings exist in a dreamlike dimension out of time, where atmosphere and emotion are constructed with a minimum of elements, repeating motifs of mirrors, masks, empty swimming pools, the graphic arabesques of the bare branches of winter trees and lozenge-shaped, swirling sunsets that recall the bright skies of Chagall. Karpowicz lives thro- ugh her work. “Especially now, when I’m working so intensely, I have the feeling that I’m more interested in the life I create than in the reality that sometimes frightens me and from which I want to escape.” While she wants the work to “have a lightness and joy of life” she also sees it as a metaphor for an existence in which we “we are all living in the moment before a catastrophe of our own and everyone will pass away” . Not searching for a style or canonical beauty, but instead working directly “from affection, emotions, from passion, from recurring dreams”, she has created a sometimes disquieting but always intriguing realm, in which half-familiar figures inhabit an alternative world from which they gaze back into our own or, averting their eyes, save us from embarrassment. KATARZYNA KARPOWICZ katarzynakarpowicz.pl @kat.karpowicz Rytuał (Ritual) , 2018, Oil on canvas. 80x100 cm Photo: Mateusz Torbus. Opposite, Imagine , 2021, Oil on canvas. 100 x 70 cm. Photo: Mateusz Torbus. Run Paint Run Text JONATHAN WIGGIN 190 ELIF SAYDAM tanyaleighton.com Berlin-based Canadian-Turkish artist Elif Saydam interweaves pop culture, craft, opulence, kitsch and the decorative in dense works that are both humorous and disconcerting, and which ricochet between intrigue, stimulation, self-recognition, hilarity and revulsion. Working in painting, sculpture, installation and text, Saydam astonishes with decorative profusion, through which they explore, amongst others, ideas of the search for social mobility, the commoditisation of culture and the patronising reduction of consumers through childish imagery. The artist creates intricate combinations of myriad materials, references and techniques, from oil-paint, acetate and inkjet transfers, to pasta, commercial imagery, raffia, cartoon images and evil eye amulets. In their latest exhibition for Tanya Leighton in Berlin, ‘F*rgiveness’, works from their ‘Sleeplessness’ series show Saydam’s interest in ideas of painstaking dextrous manual work and the combination of low and high culture, combining forms from quilting with 23 karat gold. Lemons are an oft repeated in Saydam’s work, much of which is in the form of small-scale paintings, in which beautifully realised garlands of delicate fruits and flowers exist alongside cartoon bugs, and reference both Ottoman miniature painting and the artist’s own wry fondness for the phrase “if life gives you lemons, make lemonade” Artists (Kotti) , 2020, 23k gold, inkjet transfer and oil on canvas. 30×21 cm. Photo: Gunter Lepkowski. Image courtesy the artist and Tanya Leighton, Berlin and Los Angeles. Opposite, Blue Saloon , 2021, Custom printed carpet. 675×500 cm. Photo: Fred Dott. Image courtesy the artist and Tanya Leighton, Berlin and Los Angeles. German-Japanese artist David Takeshi Yoshida worked as a chef before studying at the Vienna University for Applied Arts. Fascinated by the idea of meta-art, and inspired by his culinary background, Yoshida’s work deals with consumption, decadence and labour through a darkly humorous and multi-layered use of repeated motifs that encourage reflection and contain “some kind of visual coding with many levels of expertise required.” A palette rich in oranges, reds and night-time shades depicts almost motionless scenes lit by artificial light, where Yoshida creates a “weird calmness” reminiscent of a staged photo-shoot, producing “exaggerations you are unlikely to see in real life – but not really haunting or brutal, I think. I feel they are very close to our actual living situation.” The paintings are grouped in series based on “political or societal happenings, groups, symbols or texts” where Yoshida uses “medium-specific symbols or tricks” in paintings in which personified motifs such as the sunflower, are used as “subjects – almost as mirrored selves” that can capture the viewer’s empathy. Another repeated motif, the lobster, is for Yoshida a symbol of outrageous moral ambiguity that references David Foster Wallace’s essay on the Lobster Festival in Maine, ‘Consider the Lobster’ . This reference is particularly poignant in ‘Mainestream’ where a man dances in a red lobster costume as a lobster is only red when it has been killed and cooked. “From day one I was very conflicted but also interested in the killing, its history, its symbolism, its status as a symbol of decadence.” DAVID TAKESHI YOSHIDA @thetakeshiyoshida “Himavariation 2” , 2021, Oil on canvas. 100x70cm. Photo: Flavio Palasciano. Opposite, “Himavariation” , 2021, Oil on canvas. 50x40cm. Photo: Flavio Palasciano.