Controlled structure, uncontrolled behavior.

Each painting in Tavar Zawacki’s Interplay begins with intention, measurement, and structure. What happens within that structure is far less certain.

Once in motion, the paint drags, hesitates, pools, fades, stutters, resists, and settles in ways that cannot be completely anticipated. These behaviors become feedback. Zawacki responds to them in real time, allowing the painting to influence the decisions that follow.

Contradiction is built into the surface. Flawless gradient atmospheres create stillness: continuous shifts between colors with almost no reference point for where one color ends and another begins. Across them, color veils record the opposite—movement, pressure, interruption, and time. Subtle arcs establish a horizontal flow, while vertical stutters and stamped marks create pauses and interrupt it.

The paintings are created horizontally on a custom-built 25-square-meter platform (269 square feet) using handmade tools, custom-built equipment, and a painting process Zawacki has developed through experimentation.

The structure itself can be measured; however, the behavior cannot.

This uncertainty is not something Zawacki attempts to eliminate. It is something he actively works with. Play keeps that exchange open, allowing an unexpected behavior to become the beginning of another decision. The process continually shifts between intention and response, precision and unpredictability, stillness and movement.

Interplay is not a surrender of control but a negotiation with what escapes it.

The artist establishes the conditions.

The paint answers back.

Interplay exists somewhere between the two.