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[…]‘A city of perished heroes’, ‘a city of dead poets’, ‘a city of deceased geniuses’, ‘a graveyard of a city’ – all of us have heard such definitions of Miensk more than once. One could discard them as a poetic metaphor, were they not so utterly true. Indeed, Miensk is a dead city or the city of the dead or rather the city of dead cities. Throughout its history, the site has seen more than one Miensk come into being and vanish off the face of the earth. At different times, it used to be Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Uniate or Greek Catholic, Judaic, Orthodox again, then Soviet, Sarmatian, baroque, imperial and a provincial centre. […] In their eclectic Miensk palaces sometimes take on so surreal and hyperironical forms as to be envied by the fathers of postmodernism. Take, for instance, the Television Palace in Kamunistyčnaja (Communist) Street. The imposing colonnade in ancient Egyptian style is stuck to an ordinary constructivist façade, out of which a Renaissance pediment grows quite hesitantly, as if it were ashamed of something. Or have a look at the Belbusinessbank building in Marx Street, hardly noticeable at first sight. Its constructivist façade is decorated with several tiers of thin and delicate Corinthian columns. Really, it is the last thing to have been expected here. To crown it all, this sample of absolutely illogical architecture is adorned with stone flowers enwreathing the front door in some baroque rhythm. (Artur Klinau, The Sun City of Dreams)
[…] Renato Nicolodi's installations refer to archetypical architecture models. Real and ambiguous signs of timelessness and duration. At the same time, paradoxical signs. Monoliths of a recent date. Visual anchor points. Mental beacons in a time in which society found itself in a gigantic digital momentum where everything is questioned: science, technology, nature and the role and identity of man in it. […] Renato Nicolodi's architectonic models have a minimalist import. His systematic, dry approach gives these models a classical austerity, with which Renato follows in the footsteps of the language of forms of major Utopian architects such as Etienne-Louis Boullee and Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. Renato's spaces start out from a mathematically-ordered grid. They do not have the proportions of Vitruvian norms - or the ideal male nude of Leonardo da Vinci that stands in the middle of a square and a circle. The spaces are arranged and organised departing from stereometric figures such as cubes and pyramids; perfect and introverted in their abstract, purified form. (Johanna Kint, L'inquiétante étrangeté)
[…] The sources of sound can also be hidden in enigmatic objects, the cubic character of which brings to mind architectural constructs. Architecture and climate of cities are one of Tomasz Wilmanski's fascinations. So, too, is drawing, by means of which the artist spreads on roofing paper outlines of monumental edifices. These are hypothetical architecture - we can never be absolutely sure of their nature (are they apartment houses? sheds? castles? factories?) In some deeply suggestive way they are at the same time real; they live in the experience of each of us. Their flat figures in the darkness of the night, usually brightened up by a single window, are sometimes lengthened by a shadow, pigment-sprinkled on the floor. The night reduces the cubic character of these architectures, isolating them from neigh-boring shapes, intending them for solitude. Architecture - the most substantial particle of the world is shown to be the projection of a phantom, for the phantom is the essence of night. Drawing which spreads these essential beings on large surfaces of roofing paper has a processual nature; drawing with graphite, sketching vast planes takes many days. The work's space is filled with time. The unhurriedly unfolding rhythm of drawing and field span afford the artist the closeness of "being together with a drawing" (as he puts it): in the process of creation spatial distance between the artist and his work is rapidly reduced, the man-thing "strangeness" disappears. (Alicja Kępińska, Tropes in space)