„In June, Luiza’s garden is in fullest bloom, Its non-existence kills, like an axe“
This quote from Andrzej Bursa’s poem could be the motto of my whole artistic creation. In a perspicacious way, it defines the phenomenon of the transcendence of art which tries to be more than a banal, interim, journalistic illustration that is, unfortunately, so characteristic of many contemporary works of art.
Text written for the book ‘Es war Leben, kein Schauspiel’ published by the Polish Institute in Vienna in 2015 on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the Open Theatre in Poland.
This is the title of my exhibition, which I had in 2009 in Warsaw at the Austrian Cultural Forum. In this exhibition, I tried to show everything about my collaboration with TheaterMëRZ from Gaza, so a photographic documentation of my stage designs for this theatre, a montage of recordings of many performances, as well as posters and flyers that I designed for TheaterMëRZ.
Varvara is a small Bulgarian village clinging to the picturesque hills of Strandja one to two kilometres from the Black Sea. It has been able to avoid the tourist crowds and managed to maintain an unchanging unique charm. For many years, on the sign at the entrance to Varvara was written “this village is not for everybody”.
I have tried to interpret my work numerous times, and found different methods of such interpretation. I have referred to “Rhythm and relativism” as a definition of the semantic – visual structure of art in many of my earlier texts. In others (e.g. “pictures and… pictures”), I clashed various misunderstandings which result from the wrong interpretation of the notion ofa picture, and realized that the essence of my work is also the superimposition of many pictures on one another and relativization of their temporary meaning.
In art, rhythm is something natural, but at the same time something elusive and very difficult to define for someone who is unable to understand, notice or feel it. Theoretically, measuring the 3/4 or 4/4 rhythm in music is simple.
The latest (May) issue of DIGIT featured Kuba Tatarkiewicz’s text ‘The Art of Art’, where the author attempts to present his definition of art. A very ambitious topic, especially in a computer magazine, although DIGIT’s subtitle in its vignette reads – ART, TECHNOLOGY AND DESIGN. Kuba Tatarkiewicz’s text presented all the paradoxical misunderstandings about the subject – art and computer.
This theme came to me while working on a painting that has a rather specific history. While tidying up at the Privat Galerie (today the Temptation Gallery) in Wiesbaden where I had an exhibition in 2001, I rescued a certain painting from being thrown onto the rubbish heap.
I’ve been experiencing a strange feeling lately that opening new exhibitions is something absurd and ridiculous. Like flexing one’s muscles at a bodybuilding show or vocal displays ‘at my aunt’s on my name day’ It’s scribbling on canvas or whatever and creating ooooooobjects of art that carry no concrete meaning or practical consequences ….
Art begins where reality ends. However, this does not make it unreal or irrelevant to us. Compared to the real world, the reality of art is on a parallel dimension. Although art refers to the same objects and problems that are familiar in everyday life, it places them in a different space, in a different environment. It changes their meaning and their place in our “world view of reality”.
.