Patrik Proško

Shapes of Strokes is a series of interventions into found paintings that separate the depicted subject from the physical handwriting of the original artist. Selected areas of the painting are covered with a black field, while the relief of individual brushstrokes or marks made by other painting tools is subsequently highlighted with white lines. The coloured illusion of space and objects thus gives way to the physical structure of the painting itself. The intervention does not follow the outlines of the depicted motifs, but rather the way in which they were created. The direction, length, rhythm, and character of individual strokes reveal the movement of the hand and the tool used, bringing to the foreground a process that, in a finished painting, usually remains subordinate to the depicted subject. This principle is particularly evident, for example, in a landscape by Dieter Küppers, where the mountain ranges are modelled with a palette knife in hard, angular strokes, while the surrounding sky, painted with a brush, creates a softer and more fluid structure. Once the colours are unified by the black field, the difference between these two approaches becomes an almost graphic record of the artist’s hand. Each painting in the series produces a different drawing depending on the technique and working method of its original artist. Shapes of Strokes thus brings together two aspects of painting: the illusion created through colour and the physical record of the gestures, tools, and materials through which that illusion was made.