Rozmowa o twórczości

Abstract

Jan Bujnowski talks with dr Mirosława Moszkowicz about his artistic output of the years 1976-1996, in the field of painting, photography and drawing. The artist declares an approach different from the modernist idea of artistic reduction of the reality to a visual, abstract model. He undertakes the challenge of the dimension of reality, which is rejected e.g. by Pieter Mondrian as “plurality and fussiness”, seeking the artistic inspiration just there. In painting practice, it is connected with departure from homogeneous compositions toward sets of several paintings, representing different “space-time continua”. The artist is searching for media suitable to portray different levels of perception of reality. In the formal layer, he enters the game with illusion and its exposure; he introduces a tension between constructive tendencies and destructive forces. His attempts at juxtaposing different painting conventions are an expression of the search for his own artistic identity and limits of the artistic territory. At the same time, Jan Bujnowski definitely rejects the relativist attitude which questions the existence of established principles, claiming that the objective of the poliptych works is the striving to discover the complex connections binding the elements of the composition into one whole. For him, that method is a metaphor of life, of maturity of consciousness, of overcoming foreignness, of affirmation of the wealth of the world. In spite of the fast development of new media, it is still the artist’s personal message and not the tool, or technology which he uses. The sensual experience of the matter of the new environment of blocks of flats, permeates the painting experience and stimulates other directions of Jan Bujnowski’s creativity. For several years, the artist photographically documented the phenomenon of allotment architecture, analysing it as an anthropological and cultural text. He worked simultaneously on the idea of “home” in paining and drawing. The text ends with a discussion of the essence of drawing, its artistic characteristics, reliability of the record. The artist draws attention to the traditional role of a sketch book, as the idea of an “open work of art”.