SAINER has made a shift. His gifts as a painter, muralist and graffiti artist was that he had a poignant use of color and mood, his murals channeling a studio practice and his studio practice creating a larger than life and almost dreamlike narrative of everyday life. Then, a shift. Gone were the figures and enter a new period, one of color and fuzz, something synthetic but also familiar to the increasingly tech world we live in. It is as if the Polish painter went from being a folk painter to creating the folk art of the future.
Now he is set to open his first museum exhibtion, SAINER: COLOUR, at the National Museum in Gdansk, Poland. It comes at the perfect time, a moment of experimentation where his previous and current works mark a strong change. But it is still playing with the idea of storytelling and our limits as a viewer, and the expansive ways a painter can push a viewer. As the museum notes, "When reaching his desired effect, he goes beyond his comfort zone and sets off on his journey taking us along with him." That is a perfect note. This is SAINER's journey but we are embracing it as he pushes us to think beyond the figure. —Evan Pricco