KEY

For his third solo exhibition at the gallery, Lou Jaworski (*1981 in Warsaw, PL) creates a model-like space that reflects on the openness and transformative power of material. In KEY, marble wall pieces with geometric inscriptions become digitally abstracted intarsias and sculptural tree fragments made of cast aluminum become snapshots of possibilities. Jaworski draws on the ancient concept of Hyle: originating in Greek philosophy, Hyle refers to fundamental matter – the foundation for everything malleable. His works embody a state that exists both as a completed object and as a starting point for new forms and ideas. KEY – a reference to the K in the CMYK color spectrum – presents a world in which the malleability of material remains ongoing, with the artworks understood as reservoirs of potential. Jaworski’s pieces evoke 3D renderings that already hint at their next stage of transformation. The works from the EOS series (2025) are inlaid stone works in which millennia-old grains meet precise geometric shapes. By cutting and inserting the intarsia, symbolic images are created that become visible through the shifting of the material: a wheel as a symbol of movement and technology, a circle as an image of the cosmic and change. The natural striped structure of the marble allows the viewer‘s gaze to jump between the image carrier and its content, as in an earlier series of works entitled STRATOS. As a classic sculptural material, the marble not only becomes the image carrier, but also the image content. Jaworski opens up the view of the material as memory storage – the stripes of Striato Olimpico marble tell of geological processes, of water, pressure and time, while at the same time suggesting a space in the image. In their strict geometry, the embedded forms look like digital layers laid over the surface, transforming the stone into a model-like landscape in which organic, evolved structures meet the idea of construction and transformation. The stone itself becomes hyle: open to interpretation and new meanings. In the series of works ORBIT (2025), which consists of marble and pulverized iron meteorite, the examination of hyle is extended into a cosmic dimension. Jaworski lays a grid of squares over the natural structure of the stone, reminiscent of 3D renderings, where it marks the volume of an object in the process of becoming. Jaworski explores the relationships between galactic space and digital space and the infinite potential that unfolds within them. In addition, there is the fusion of different temporalities – digital technology, ancient marble and meteorite dust-containing pigment – with which Jaworski refers to the interaction of past, present and future. He continues exploring these question of value and the transformation of image and material in the exhibition with ICON ;-) (2025). Here, Jaworski cuts a winking smiley face out of a 4.7 billion-year-old iron meteorite from the Altai Mountains in China. While the smiley as digital language and minimalist code of human emotions only exists for the moment, the meteorite remains as a physical trace for billions of years. Jaworski thus reflects on the transience of language, the perception of duration and the relativity of time. The juxtaposed temporalities – digital and cosmic – thus meet and simultaneously refer to the development of things. The AERIALS series of works gives a further hint of the next step in the digital transformation. Here, Jaworski transfers wood into aluminum – once characterized by growth and time – the materiality becomes a memory store and medium of unfolding. The sculpture ZET (2025), which suggests an arrow pointing upwards, thus appears like a scalable entity that can always be rethought. In this state of potential, or the apparent incompleteness of movement, Jaworski emphasizes the fundamental openness of matter and its ability to be constantly redefined. Through the geometric mesh structure of the surface, inspired by digital 3D renderings, Jaworski also refers to the infinite possibilities of modeling and expansion that are possible through both organic growth and computer-generated simulations. The aluminum sculptures thus become snapshots of a process that constantly redefines form and material and shows how matter moves from nature to abstraction and from the past to the future.