Slawomir Elsner

International audiences know Slawomir Elsner (b. Wodzislaw Slaski, Poland, 1976; lives and works in Berlin) for his naturalistic paintings and abstract watercolors, but it was his brilliantly executed, colorful drawings that made him famous. The technique of his work in crayons is as formidable as it is singular and underlies his many adaptations of legendary works from the history of painting. Do pictures represent reality or distort it? That is the question that guides his inquiries. Many of the works frame accidents, wars, nuclear tests, or other horrible events. By harnessing the means of art to detach their depiction from a documentary setting, Elsner achieves an unrivaled degree of aestheticization; his works are fascinating at first glance, only to fill the beholder with a creeping dread.