Material synecdoche as a framework for motif selection in contemporary painting

Real objects can appear unfamiliar before an artist transforms them. This article develops material synecdoche as a framework for analysing how such encounters become painting motifs. Three minimum analytical conditions connect a traceable source, interrupted functional recognition, and a consequential part to a bounded whole. A practice-based comparison examines a discarded sofa, a utility fixture, and a wrapped stump in the author’s Mono series. Source photographs, drawings, paintings, and dated studio records are compared through a common protocol, with annotated correspondences distinguishing visible structures from retrospective testimony. The sofa’s spring region and the fixture’s seams and openings pass into painting through structures selected in drawing. The stump retains a contour and covering–wood division, while its later paper treatment constitutes pictorial invention rather than evidence of source history. Recognition interruption is retrospectively reported for the sofa and fixture and remains unresolved for the stump. An unused armchair provides a negative contrast, and published documentation of Pablo Tomek’s Nature Morte extends the comparison. Material synecdoche makes motif selection an explicit object of analysis by connecting a specific source, the selection of a consequential part, and its transformation without equating fidelity to reality with optical resemblance.