Antoni Malinowski

In a world dominated by avarice and pragmatism, our physical surroundings are too often unresponsive and ‘flat’. Antoni Malinowski’s work animates the formal framework he finds with a passion for colour, texture and a resonance with the unrequited poetic potential of the everyday. Text by Eric Parry

Antoni Malinowski is an artist who works with pigment, light, movement and time, investigating the dynamic relationship that exists between pictorial and architectural spaces. After studying painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and furthering his studies at the Chelsea Collage of Art, Malinowski has established and based his practice in London. Since his first wall drawing installations in the mid 1980s Antoni Malinowski has been working in a variety of media including painting on canvas and walls, video, and drawing on often very large scale. Malinowski has done many painting/drawing installations including “Wall Drawing for RIBA”, London 1998; “Echoing the Pavilion” at De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea and the Architectural Association, London 2001; “Bridging Lines Venice” during the Architectual Venice Bienalle 2004, “Bridging Colours” at and around Gallery 175, Seoul 2010.

In 2009 Antoni Malinowski has become the first contemporary artist in the 200 year history of Dulwich Picture Gallery to make a drawing/ painting installation directly on the walls of this oldest museum in England ( The Polish Connection – Dulwich Picture Gallery,London and the Royal Castle, Warsaw 2009 ) Malinowki’s paintings have been exhibited internationally and are in many private and public collections including Tate, London.

Following his major solo exhibition at the Camden Arts Centre, London in 1997 Antoni Malinowski spent several months as an Abbey Scholar at the British School at Rome researching the ancient Roman wall paintings. This triggered many collaborations with architects on permanent interventions in architecture. They range from engineering colour for facades to complex wall paintings and include Vermilion Wall painting spanning three floors at the Royal Court Theatre (2000), London and the façade and interior spaces of the Coin Street Community Centre (2007), London , both collaborations with Haworth Tompkins Architects; wall painting at the Luxor Theatre (2002), Rotterdam , collaboration with Bolles+Wilson Architects; Venetian glass mosaics for the elevation on Maddox Street, London ( Spectral Stream, 2009 ) and for a building’s entrance on Bryanston Street, London, both collaborations with Eric Parry Architects and Orsoni Venice. Malinowski has also done the wall and ceilings paintings at the HTA refurbished Chichester Festival Theatre and the foyer ceiling paintings at the new Everyman Theatre, Liverpool designed by Haworth Tompkins – this won the 2014 Stirling Prize. In 2015 Malinowski completed a large commission for the foyer areas at the Rafael Viñoly designed Mathematical Institute, Oxford. “Spectral Flip” is a two part mural painted directly onto the south and the north facing walls, seemingly creating a luminous force field between them.

His Light Triggered painting installation at the Ragged School Museum, London in 2018, transformed the top floor of the dilapidated building into a place of communion between the light pouring down from the skylights and the light reflected and refracted by the pigmented surfaces of the paintings. In 2019 Antoni Malinowski completed a permanent painting installation on the elevations of a building in the centre of Chelmsford. Mill Square Reflections comprise of 100 hand painted panels that correspond to and reflect different aspects of the sunlight as it moves across the elevations. Because of the light reflecting and refracting qualities, the painted panels are dematerialising the monotonous brick elevations. The building is animated by the play of light and the ever changing colours.

Image by Sue Barr