SPIRITVESSEL, Espinavessa

Paulina Semkowicz

ASHES continues Paulina Semkowicz’s series of atmospheric spaces that propose a potential scenario for an imagined action to unfold. In this new gesture—where painting assumes a sculptural dimension—the artist creates an omniscient presence presiding over a habitat of dripping pigments, functioning simultaneously as background and figure. The title becomes both metaphor and material reference: like volcanic ash, pigment disperses, settles, and accumulates, forming surfaces that evoke traces of time and suspended movement. ASHES evokes the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which buried the city of Pompeii beneath layers of rock and pumice. Paradoxically, this material of destruction also preserved frescoes, objects, and the impressions of human bodies, fixing a moment of life within hardened ash.Paradoxically, this material of destruction also preserved frescoes, objects, and the impressions of human bodies, fixing a moment of life within the hardened ash.

 

Semkowicz’s proposal takes the atmosphere of an imagined archaeological site as its point of departure—an environment where time appears layered rather than linear, and where traces of past presence emerge through fragments, surfaces, and voids. Such sites hold a particular tension between revelation and concealment: what is uncovered is always partial, surrounded by what remains buried or lost. The volcanic ash that once engulfed Pompeii embodies this duality, both obscuring and safeguarding what lay beneath, transforming catastrophe into an unexpected act of conservation.

 

The work approaches excavation not as historical reconstruction but as a sensorial field—one where textures, shadows, and residues suggest the persistence of human presence without fully disclosing its narrative. Layers of pigment echo the stratified deposits of tephra itself: accumulations that conceal, protect, and reveal in equal measure. Continuing her exploration of painting as a spatial and scenographic medium, Semkowicz envisions a series of works that evoke the tactile and atmospheric qualities of unearthed environments. Surfaces appear layered, eroded, or in the process of emerging, recalling walls revealed after centuries underground or the mineral traces left by time and pressure. Drawing on her background in theatre painting, the artist constructs images that function as potential stages—settings where an action seems to have already taken place or is about to unfold.

 

Within the context of the fair booth, the installation operates as a quiet field of discovery: a landscape of fragments in which absence, imprint, and the suggestion of vanished actors make for a scenario where an arrangement of new paintings become the primary carriers of meaning.

https://www.spiritvesselespinavessa.com