The Monk

The triptych 'The Monk' was created in 2020. Acrylic on canvas, aluminium/gold pigment 3x:140x200cm, video projection. Caspar David Friedrich's painting The Monk by the Sea (Der Mönch am Meer, 1810) deliberately dispenses with the artist's characteristic central figure, turned towards the viewer and confronting the romantic landscape, in favour of depicting the human figure as an insignificant detail, overwhelmed by the scale of nature's ‘surface’. Inspired by this idea, the projection in Lejman's painting reintroduces a lonely figure into the centre of an abstract triptych evoking associations with the landscape. However, the protagonist here is not a human being, but a white medical suit, moved in the film by blown air in a comically ‘human’ choreography. When the air is released, the ‘pandemic’ costume shrinks and becomes motionless, depriving us of the illusion of life, just as its projection is an illusion of presence in the image. MOLSKI Collection Poznań