The Study

Imperfect, crippled, besmeared splendour. Light lazily oozing in through the threadbare curtains shamefully reveals mustiness and nakedness. Blackened relics of the past – the shining French polish, the noble matt velvet – still bear the hallmarks of aristocratic prodigality. Łukasz Stokłosa’s paintings depict the interiors of old European aristocratic seats – empty drawing rooms, dust-covered bedrooms, dining rooms abandoned by their former users. They are displayed in an interior that acts as silent testimony to similar transformations – the old study of Gideon von Wallenberg-Pachaly. By bringing back the non-existing atmosphere of the life of European aristocrats, the artist resurrects the ambience of this peculiar architectural space, of rooms connected by a winding staircase with a balustrade, full of mirrors, candelabras and splendid furniture. The corpses of palace rooms become the victims of social transformations. Towards the end of G.T. di Lampedusa’s The Leopard, a book that extols the slow collapse of aristocracy, the following description can be found: “This was one of those rooms which have two faces, one with a mask that they show to ignorant visitors, the other which is only revealed to those in the know, the owner in particular, to whom all its squalid essence is manifest.”

photo: Małgorzata Kujda