Początek rzeczy - powrót po śladach

Abstract

Since my graduation I have been actively involved in art. I usually work using graphic techniques, mainly the Intaglio. Long experience in graphic art has allowed me to develop different ways of print making. Paradoxically, difficult access to etching materials forced me to try to obtain Intaglio prints without etching them. These experiences have contributed significantly to the development of my print-making skills, sometimes leading to surprising results. Each of my series of prints was for me a separate Ideological task and a separate technological experience. When making them I insisted on formal diversity from the earliest series called "Trials" dating back to 1998 (my first attempt at making holes in zinc plates), through "Anxiety" in 2004 (using cardboard matrices and damaged metal sheets combined with linocut), prints from 2007 made using the dry point technique, to "Spare Parts" series (2009-2010), where to make a matrix I used metal from scrap yards. Since 2011, I have been working mainly in the digital technology. My thesis entitled "The beginning of things - tracing back the footprints" includes twelve prints measuring 100x70 cm and one measuring 100x140 cm. They were made in mixed technique with a predominance of intaglio and dry point. I used mainly aluminium sheets and also recycled metal. In the process of making prints I also included sheets found in scrap yards and used them as matrices. There were also elements of linocut and of lettering. The graphic series may be divided into three trends. The first is represented by works in which there are only impressions of items which create abstract arrangements. Gears, machine parts, boards, elements of indefinite origin, fragments of old sheets form a kind of puzzle made more vivid with the colour red. The second trend is where spontaneous lines coexist on one surface with impressions of matrix-sheets, emphasised with the colour black, pink or green. The whiteness of paper is an equal participant of abstract art. The third trend is the one where an experiment has absorbed me - impressing rust itself from the surface of a fine grid which is an integral part of the print, but at the same time forms a background for centrally appearing black elements. I treated my doctoral work as an open field of creative exploration and experimentation to come up with a new artistic value. The title of my doctoral thesis series "The beginning of things - tracing back the footprints" refers to the way in which my prints involve leaving on the matrix the impression of tools, various objects, traces of accidental damage and non-accidental actions understood as impressions or footprints like the ones left in the natural world by people and animals. The title “Tracing back the footprints" can also be understood as a reference to the mental, internal route of each artist from intense experiencing of reality to revealing its essential image hidden in memory. Art gives an opportunity for such a "return of the image" after a symbolic cycle of experience, although of course it never returns to the starting point. When working on the series, I focused on an expressive and intuitive approach to the act of creation. I'm interested in the play between abstract form resulting from the gesture and its archetype from reality, the juxtaposition of intuitive traces of dry point with the imprints of found ready matrices sometimes exposed to additional treatment. The techniques which I have used merge and coexist at the same time - giving a world which is chaotic and structured simultaneously. What was important for me was an element of surprise and its accidental nature, and the ability to use the two in my works. My graphic prints are the outcome, among other things, of the manner of observing the reality, experience, inspirations accumulated earlier and released during direct work on the matrix. I have not used classic sketches but rather quick "working maps". It is to some extent opposite to the essence of traditional print-making which usually follows the principle of proceeding from a carefully selected starting image, through transferring it with the "mirror method" to the plate, where it is processed. My working method did not rely on a pre-planned implementation of objectives, but on allowing for the possibility to modify the idea in the course of intuitive operation for the benefit of the artistic message of the works. In my dissertation I have referred to the texts of Roland Barthes, to the works of Cy Twombly - his spontaneous art of painting and work in the spirit of abstract expressionism, as well as to graphic works and paintings of Emil Schumacher. I have also referred to "poor" materials and subjects in the works of Antoni Tapies and Tadeusz Kantor.