Untitled (Traffic)

A few years ago, Sasnal began dividing his time between his hometown, Kraków, and Los Angeles. This annual cycle has given him a unique perspective on the sprawling Californian metropolis. Neither a tourist nor a resident of the city, he remains attuned to the slightest changes and differences around him. Always out on the tarmac, cycling – his favourite mode of transport – Sasnal perceives everyday life as if he were seeing it for the first time, through the eyes of an outsider.

Empty cardboard boxes, from a bedding shop, hastily pieced together to serve as a shelter; a Corona delivery lorry beneath the blue Californian sky; a couple embracing amidst the waves of the Pacific; an anonymous suburban street, littered with overturned bins; the artist’s daughter in a swimming pool, her eyes fixed on her phone, whilst an idyllic sunset unfolds over the desert; the ceaseless motorway traffic and the recurring theme of tarmac: all scenes that are easily observed and interpreted. Yet what sets these motifs apart from mere observation is the way in which Sasnal renders them. ‘I know what I want to paint, but I don’t know what the painting will look like,’ the artist confides. Rapid photographic cropping as a compositional technique; fine, fluid brushstrokes contrasting with creamy highlights of thick paint; the use of artificial rather than local colours; the treatment