Assembled choruses, interfering levels, trial and (artistic) error – for Theodor W. Adorno, the style of the
medley in popular American music was just too unbearable for him to address it explicitly in his writings on music
theory.
In analogy to the musical form of the medley, yet this time visual, Luisa Kasalicky and Siegfried Zaworka have assembled
fragments of older series of their works into new artworks. In the picture series Medleys by Zaworka, rhythmic
and harmonic modulations refer to the formalization of pictorial elements. Taken from already completed series of
paintings, drawings, and prints, these elements are assembled into square, emblematically compressed panel pictures
– like the work Medley 17’, which includes the repertoire of forms from the installation-like
painting called Funktionale (2017/19).
Kasalicky’s canvas Tag bei Nacht (Day at Night) is also based on the installation with the title
Wovon sprechen wir? (What Are We Talking About?) (2021), which consists of montage sculptures.
The artist juxtaposes her pictorial and reflective, rectangular new version, which is leaning against the wall,
with the organic forms of her original installation, which are embedded in an indentation in the exhibition room. We can
find hints about the combination of colors, written in hand in each respective hue, on the frame of the picture. The
subjective and analytical element of these color experiments is interlocked with the more objective systematics of
samples of binding agents, pigments and varnishes on no longer used charts from the art academy.
A cutout resembling a palette, and actually used by Kasalicky and Zaworka as a palette, seems to be saying: “Keep
painting, or the paint will dry on me and form a relief!”
— Siegfried Zaworka
