Patrik Proško

See-through

From the cycle ‘The Shapes of Strokes’, painting on the imitation of the original, 40 x 30 cm, acrylic on canvas

Private collection

2017

See-through

Some time ago, I bought this painting in an antique shop. It is a reproduction on canvas on which someone had repainted the brush strokes with transparent acrylic paste around twenty years ago in an attempt to recreate the original. Although the strokes do not correspond to the motif, the illusion of the original is very believable on the first look. In the black circular underpainting, the relief of the brush strokes is highlighted by white lines, giving rise to a kind of an “x-ray” window into the surface treatment of the painting which the original motif abstracts away from, visually. Today, the painting reproductions that use this surface imitational technique are usually printed on 3D printers. This might be one of the last original, handmade “fakes”.

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