Malachite Cube in the Toilet

• painterly installation, 2023

“Malachite Cube in the Toilet” is an installation conceived as an ornament in the spirit of the painterly manner of trompe l’oeil, i.e. illusionistic representation of a motif with such verisimilitude as to deceive the viewer concerning its materiality. This convention, used by painters from the late Gothic to the 19th century, today tends to be used as an artistic provocation or joke. Jan Mioduszewski, a consummate painter who has also created artistic objects and installations, juggles the objects depicted in his works, disrupting the customary rules and logic. He stresses the role of contextualization – his paintings, usually cut out of a wooden board, enter into relations with objects in the same space. Such object- hybrids, for example pieces of furniture com- bined with an illusionary fragment, blur the perceptual boundary between truth and fiction. In the featured installation, Jan Mioduszewski used the effect of decorative painting to create the illusion of a stone surface. The material of his choice is malachite, a semi-precious stone with unusual shades of green. Like marble, it was often faked through painting. As the artist remarked, malachite brings good sleep andoptimism. But will its fake version have the same properties?