Series: Zig Zag Ornament I

At the beginning of this cycle was a number of small pencil sketches in which I tested the possible compositions of a surface delimited in advance by vertical division into bands using zig zag ornaments. One of the earliest outcomes partitioned the surface into horizontal stripes with chequered fields. The application of diagonal and horizontal lines in the composition hinted at a principle frequently used in traditional landscape painting. The individual fields in this painting were filled using the basic colour scale following different rules in each zig zag stripe. In another alternative drawing I discovered that if I fill one band with horizontal stripes and an adjacent band with vertical stripes they may meet, producing a two-dimensional ornament that

I refer to as crenellation patterns. When walking past the painting and viewing it from aside one is confronted with the famous perspective shortcut known as the “road effect” and, instead of crenellations, sees undulating lines or a zig zag ornament. Having experienced a single look from aside, each viewer is then capable of switching his/her vision between the two compositions. In yet another painting delimited in a similar manner I dealt with a gradual transformation from red to white and back. The cycle was made complete by large paintings in which I used fine lines of various colours and, again, experimented with the overall colour scheme and gradation of the individual colours.