Norman LETO (b. 1980), Woman with a zakwefiona face, 2013

oil, canvas; 65 x 81 cm;
Signed and dated on reverse: NORMAN (LETO) 2013
Image: reproduced in: People Who Still Want Something from Me, [Sopot] 2016, p. 168;
reproduced in: Arkadiusz Półtorak, People who still want something from me, [Sopot] 2016, p. 30.

Visual artist, filmmaker and writer. Creates paintings, objects and installations both in physical space and virtual reality. Works at the intersection of fictional fiction, philosophy and science. He lives and works in Warsaw. His works can be found, among others, in the collections of the CCA Ujazdowski Castle, the National Museum in Cracow, the Arsenal Gallery in Bialystok, the ING Polish Art Foundation, the Museum of Contemporary Art
Cracow (MOCAK).

"In addition to technocratic insides - "winks of the eye" to viewers sympathetic to the figure of the programmer - however, we also find in Norman's paintings indications of those who are often harmed in the world of cybersex and cyber warfare, such as illegal immigrants. Moreover, some paintings, by their very aura, inspire anxiety similar to that of watching dramatic news stories
on television (or one's own image from a CCTV or thermal camera). Among the finest examples is Woman with a Queered Face (2013): a portrait of a Muslim woman in a burqa made with a dry brush, balancing on the verge of photorealism - a bit faded, however, and not quite hiding the duct of the painter's tool, making it resemble an image from outdated CRT TVs or a
surreptitiously taken phone footage: could it be footage from an Al Jazeera report on terrorist sit-ins? The tranquility exuded by the 'bourgeois' interior depicted in the painting seems deceptive: something is clearly - in a recognizable way - wrong here."
"Leto is an artist of the first decade of the 21st century - he belongs to the generation of artists who were the first to say "no" to agitational art, known rather for simplicity as critical art. Even when he paints the painting Woman with a Queer Face, depicting a Muslim woman, I don't suspect that he is doing so in order to speak out in the political discussion that is rushing through the mass media in such a brisk but gutter-like stream.
However, refraining from participating in it does not diminish the potential of painting - although it can be understood in Leto's case as an escape from the routine of daily work, it is not an escape from the responsibility of the artistic medium."
(excerpts: Arkadiusz Półtorak, Painting in Times of Anxiety [in:] People Who Still Want Something from Me, exhibition catalog under the same title, State Art Gallery in Sopot, 2016)