Jan Tarasin (1926 Kalisz - 2009 Warsaw), Table of Games, 1996

oil, canvas, 73 x 92 cm, signed and dated l.d.: Jan Tarasin 96, described and dated on the back: JAN TARASIN 1996/TABLE OF GAMES

"Table of Games" from 1996 reveals Tarasin's characteristic method of building a painting from autonomous, repeated signs - dots, ovals, arcs, rectangles - distributed on a light background like elements of a mysterious system. A distinctive and at the same time out of order register of painterly and graphic forms allows to capture the pulsating rhythm of a living organism: constant transformation, condensation and decay, simplification, complication... Red juxtaposed with brown and blue gives the composition tension, although none of the elements claims the right to dominate.

Looking at Jan Tarasin's paintings, some see paranormal preparations scattered on a laboratory tray, others a board of an unknown game or an experimental musical score. This is completely in line with the intentions of the artist, who said: "I enjoy the fact that countless situations can be created from limited elements. The idea is to get as close as possible to the world, to its mechanisms. (...) We want to know it, because we are a part of it. We feel a great satisfaction when we find that, practicing art, we speak a common language with a completely unknown person of a completely different profession."