O rombie w mojej sztuce

Abstract

The text entitled On the Rhombus in My Art discusses one of the stages of Andrzej Bębenek’s creative journey; from the moment of selecting the simple form of a geometric sign - RHOMBUS, to introducing it in a number of artistic acts. In a series of sculpture-objects created since 1993, the artist has broadened his experience acquired on paper and canvas to include the problem of the presence of the rhombus in space. At that time, he created a collection of sculpture-statuettes complemented with gouaches and small white pieces of carton pinned to the walls and scattered on the floor, presented at an exhibition at the ZPAP Gallery in Katowice in 1994. That idea of manipulation with multiplied form was developed by the happening at the vernissage of an exhibition at the Space Gallery in Krakow in 1994. Its participants could dip their hands in a rhombus medium and influence its shape freely. The series of the so-called Red Albums, which the artist started in 1995, had a slightly different form of creative collecting. The whole was divided into topical series (each red binder was a separate series, with its own title: My Rhombus - My House, Rhombus in Art, Rhombi in Sight, Rhombus Mania, Around Rhombus, I and Rhombus, Rhombusworks). They constituted a peculiar gallery whose objective was to show differences and similarities between the mathematical scheme of the rhombus, and the free forms of creative expression, in any artistic technique or discipline. Parallel to that, the artist worked on attempts at placing the rhombus in public space. In May 1992, he carried out a spontaneous operation Rhombus in the Main Market Square in Krakow, which consisted in introducing a contour of that sign made of white paper into the rhythm of the flagstones. The artist traced also the magical force of the chosen motif in the landscape (the operation in winter of 1994). The description of the above-mentioned operations is accompanied by a broader philosophical reflection on the nature of this figure.