Rosenthal Fine Art is pleased to present The Real Real -- a new exhibition by Dennis Wojtkiewicz. In this new body of work, the artist questions what place is there of such fiercely analog work in a mechanized, mass-produced, digital world? What is the value of a painting painstakingly constructed over time when anyone can capture an image instantly with a phone and further heighten its reality through manipulation?
In his recent artist's statement Wojtkiewicz talks about his process:
I focus primarily on how light interacts with the diverse surfaces of natural forms—forms that exist at the boundary of biology and sensuality, carrying within them an erotic charge tied to their fertility and ephemerality.
The close-up, intimate vantage points I choose liberate these forms from mere depiction, pressing them toward abstraction, toward rhythm, pattern, and texture. They surrender to the idea that representation itself is an unreliable illusion, asking the viewer to engage the paintings not just as signs pointing to recognizable objects but as vivid, sensual encounters—experiences accountable only to their own internal logic.
Finally Wojtkiewicz invites us to experience the work:
Ultimately, my paintings are about attention and presence. They reimagine biology's fleeting moments of beauty as luminous icons, asking us not only to contemplate impermanence but also to celebrate the act of looking itself—the possibility of finding, again and again, that moment of discovery where craft, vision, and wonder converge.