Other

12.01.23r
09:28 am
I dreamt that I was in Warsaw, but I don’t remember for what purpose. I think it was to visit Mom. I was alone. I was walking along streets with an amazing appearance being a combination of monumental Socialist Realist architecture, sometimes Art Deco, sometimes Brutalist, and all this interspersed with greenery growing, for example, halfway up the buildings on peculiar balconies, faults, pylons, etc. The buildings formed dilapidated masses, with little or no windows with falling off plaster interspersed with dilapidated canels and other ornaments connected by withered greenery with some ice-like elements, and woven into all of this were other such as flat and broken clock faces. There were also bas-reliefs turning…. into drawings of strange proportions. I walked blindly, guided only by a hunch of the sides of the world to myself in Praga. I entered an amazing complex of buildings where the initial part was a structure of pergolas and pillars overgrown, as I mentioned partially in the middle and on top of which was followed by a wide square with a very strange floor and circular water tanks or fountains. The whole thing was monumental, but not by its height what more by the vast distances, proportions and apparent symmetry. It appeared that I had entered an area of military buildings but of the type of offices of generals or politicians rather than ordinary barracks. Somewhere I saw symbols similar to Nat’s, some figures in helmets, and the whole composition seemed to close in forcing me to retreat. At about the height of the aforementioned fountain-tanks, the character changed to a complex of university buildings with a huge square in the middle where I met a “colleague” with whom I greeted on the fly and went on. The street I walked along was vast, with strange decorations in the form of pylons in the shape of a NATO pedestal and a bent palm, in the upper part overgrown with weeds. Surprisingly, there were no cars. The floors of the streets were shabby, decorated with something like mosaic fragments of huge pages of written text, or elements of ornamentation reminiscent of the Doric style. Walking further, I passed a building that was bizarre with a facade that was a mix of Art Nouveau and Socialist Realism, with statues including one with a giant hand thickening, turning into….rysuction. It housed a restaurant of some sort. There were few people around, and if they were, they were dressed in a kind of bundled rags and cardboard boxes shown somewhat through a filter of agitation. The next part of the dream was a New Year’s Eve party also taking place in Warsaw, similarly strange but this time there were elements of ice, orifice, some ruins hooked up to buildings, and the lighting was heavy, muffled, partly nocturnal. First there was the scene just before the New Year’s Eve party where I stood at the bus stop waiting for the streetcar. This stop was overcrowded with people, the architecture was heavy, dark, and the street opposite “disappeared” into darkness or just in general on the other side was darkness instead of buildings. In the crowd I met a friend with whom in the physical world we were supposed to meet, but we didn’t make it, and I had the urge to avoid her due to the fact that I would have to explain myself somehow, but after a while I decided that I would approach her, because in the streetcar we would probably see each other anyway. I don’t remember the conversation, and only a fragment of the situation already inside the streetcar, where there was a silent, sleepy crowd, all in an underexposed space, neglected with an oneiric atmosphere. Then I met up with friends who were also supposed to be at the event. Already at the venue of the party itself, we were in a terribly dark place, where the layout of the tables resembled some kind of zigzag like at a wedding, where most people did not know each other. The host was also unknown, but the “venue” was private in a large house. Further down the line, my friend (actually a doctor) connected with a large syringe to the mouth of her college friend, and inside this syringe they began to exchange liquids on the principle of letting in colorful “clouds.” Their faces were painted in a strange way somewhat reminiscent of American Halloween. This was their intended performance without an erotic background. The guests were generally in very muted colors of brown, olive green, etc. At one point, several people came in painted and dressed somewhat geisha-style, where in one of them, for example, half of her face was black and half was pale white. These characters had incredibly mean and dangerous expressions in their eyes. I was afraid of them. Among one of them I recognized an acquaintance from my college years. They were dressed in a bit of the style of traditional Japanese kimonos in a rather sharp purple color, which made them very distinctive from the rest. After a while they disappeared. The next scene was New Year’s Eve itself where everyone went out on the town. I left everyone and started walking home to Praga. Christopher(name changed) appeared here, that is, an acquaintance from the store where I get my paint supplies. He was slimmer than he actually is and was wearing a much too small jacket. In the course of the “walk” I got lost with him while my Mom and Mark showed up, but I eventually lost them too or we just hung up. I moved as if on skates wearing ordinary shoes. There was a whole bunch of people, but no one was shooting firecrackers and in general the festivities themselves were held without fireworks although you could feel the New Year’s atmosphere. So I was “slipping” on those shoes of mine. The streets were an amazing conglomeration of monumentality, the ornamentation of the lower parts of the buildings, and the streets a confusion of all sorts of decorations, mosaics and ice. In part, they were built of “cat heads.”At one point I passed an open pavilion where there were partially naked hippies, evidently referring to John Lennon and Yoko Ono from the 1960s who were lying on some low elements and just plonking themselves down. They were partially covered in white sheets, long-haired, homeless and identified with the hippie movement, but without the lavishness. Lennon’s music just sounded in the background. It was something even like some kind of artistic event, a complete departure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVxpzYuL_B0&list=TLPQMDgwOTIwMjL4VoXo2-osbg&index=2

The image of “Gruzfall” and a flying bird with chicks was created as another of several planned versions of the original idea from 2020. I wanted to deal with this topic again, to capture and paint differently what appears in my head very often when creating the prototype. In a way, this is my curse, because sometimes the version of the idea puts a question mark over the current job, which can be annoying and frustrating. I wanted to give the presented topic as much space as possible, which was helped by the exceptionally large format of 150 cm on the longer side. The idea itself is a visualization of my feeling, impression or awareness of the end of human existence in the broad sense of this issue. It is difficult for me to describe this state in a few sentences, like other mental states, because it would require extensive development of each of them, which would probably be monotonous and ultimately boring or even grotesque. Both the image and the music do it – I have an impression through other channels – probably more accurately and directly, allowing for a non-semantic dialogue. The source of this pessimism is both internal and external. The first, as a centrifugal impulse felt already in early school age, as the accompanying atmosphere of all-fatalism, failure, losing the world in the fight against itself, the advantage of vices ultimately leading to total collapse and nothingness. In the human world, I do not see a positive point from which all this would somehow begin to fall into place, compromise, merge to remain in relative peace. It is quite the opposite. I also find it, in person, with the difference, whether by hope or the opposite, with the fear that in the basic form – that is, biological survival – I will manage to maintain my own existence, despite all the difficulties, that by some miracle I will manage to survive the minimal and how precious the autonomy of being, allowing it to be separated from the rest of the world. The second sensation takes the form of a flooding ocean of negative information, resulting from the observation of the outside world, the collision of which with the remnants of positive content leaves dust from the latter. The age-old conviction that nothing can stop the processes described earlier. Both impulses are related mostly to the same thing – just the outside world. In its basic, modern form, it reminds me of civilization. The one with the city, and thus with architecture, as a derivative of the basic, component of human activity, i.e. creating a shelter (home) from the environment. Hence the idea of ​​macro-scale decaying buildings as an endless waterfall (rubble). This is a slightly different version than the original, in which, apart from buildings, I painted everything like flies, monuments, faces and other symbolic elements. Here, city rubble plays the first fiddle, although there are a few elements that are completely different from the base. While painting the first layer, I found that I would add an element that was supposed to be the main topic of another work, namely a huge gap that would suck everything in. A moment later, formal dependencies, a certain desire to play with light and for the general perception of the image, I placed the main light source behind this aperture, which of course contradicts rationality, but this is not the point here and with single rays I illuminated individual parts of the work. At one point, I felt an urge to paint something alive, to emphasize the stillness of the scene and enhance its drama. In the first idea there was a bird, which I painted immediately and which was to be torn because it suited me like the architectural ruins. The hand guided the brush differently and it came out quite smooth, relatively clean bird, which is in a way contradicting the whole. Initially, this deviation irritated me, which in turn led to the thought of adding two chicks, one of which falls into the abyss due to the loss of strength by an adult. Until now, a bird that looks like “from too good a home” irritates me a bit, but on the other hand, its dissimilarity may give the viewer more question marks. That thought held me back from reworking, and I ended up leaving it as it was. I consider the theme of “Gruzfall” to be still inexhaustible and I plan to continue to associate with it in subsequent versions.

The painting depicting a dead city covered by a huge sheet carried by birds was created in 2021, and the work on it took two months and was finished at the turn of March and April. I do not remember when the idea on this topic arose: whether it appeared as a variation of the city with a pet, or maybe it arose at a different time. And I remember the frame that appeared before my eyes, which was similar to the one presented, and the starry sky as the third plan of the whole. On the constructional level, I wanted a kind of pathos of the scene, in which flying headsless birds hold a damaged canvas, which is ultimately intended to cover the city, completing its end. Originally the birds were supposed to scream to add more drama to the scene, but after painting the sketch, I found silence to be more fitting and without losing the drama. That is why I removed the heads of the birds, which probably made everything even more dead. The initial idea was a huge fabric lying on the ground, which birds pulled over the ruins like a huge sheet, but in the course of work I thought to connect the second plane (fabric) with the third (sky), so that the sheet would flow down from the sky. I found it a more interesting solution and painted it. I wanted a highly saturated light reflected from the sky, which was balanced by a soft reddish light above the horizon on the opposite side. All this to reinforce the unreality of the situation. Sometimes I have dreams in this kind of lighting. As a complement to the whole, on one of the buildings I painted a figure making a silencing gesture. I do not want to describe the philosophical, or perhaps more ideological, part in order not to spoil the viewer’s inquiries and, contrary to appearances, it is not too great. When the painting entered the detail stage, the silence I thought at the sketch stage turned into the beginning of Carmina Burana’s “O Fortuna” with the characteristic sound of a choir, so sometimes I looked at it as a spectacle of silence, and at other times in the background I heard the beginning of the aforementioned work by Carl Orff. The picture is 100 x 118 cm and it is painted in oil technique on an aluminum plate.

Pencils. The series consists of twelve works created in 2013 in Warsaw, after considerable life changes and waiting for a return to Szczecin. I do not plan to return to this technique anymore, so the works will be a kind of "white crows". Except for one, the rest are 100 cm by 70 cm. Below I show the available ones.

The picture showing an empty city with a burning quadruped walking was created a bit faster than the previous ones. This resulted from the search for new solutions to operate with the oil technique, specifically a different method of applying paint and using a different type of brushes, previously widely omitted. As the effect was even promising, I decided to explore new possibilities and see what will come of it in the next works. I am not titling pictures on purpose. Painting of this type, i.e. mostly visionary, where the finished work more or less resembles what you have “seen” – in my opinion – it does not need titles, or even contradicts them. This is due to the structure of the picture. Just as dreams are not foreshadowed by large, gliding titles and we do not wake up when the curtain with the words “The End falls”, and the artistic vision cannot be given a title. something completely different than the beginning would suggest. This is a coincidence, which in my case is a very important creative factor. Hence my opinion is that in most cases the title is an attribute of a different type of painting and can easily be omitted. viewers. When experiencing a vision, you need to be sensitive and do not blur this gently obscuring the awareness of the film with sudden concentration of attention, because then it is easy to “turn off the channel”, which I could most easily compare to the situation of taking someone out of the thoughtful state. After a while, however, you do have some practice and control over the process. How does it look like? Contrary to appearances, this is not a complicated process and everyone, but absolutely everyone, can imagine it – literally. Well, if we think about any thing, it usually appears before our eyes in all its glory, detail, almost with photographic accuracy. It’s like putting a photo with high transparency on the eye lens, through which we see reality. Everyone has it and this is what it looks like. The process is interesting because it is usually not a problem to imagine, for example, a horse’s silhouette, which will be appropriate, in proportions and with perfect lighting. The problem arises when it is necessary to recreate the image in the form of artistic techniques. Of course, the example above is one of the many ways in which a concept for a future image is born. Returning to the topic: At one point, while sketching a completely different idea, I saw a view of the city from a certain height with a slowly walking, burning pet. A second later I had it roughly sketched. After some time, I started working on a pencil sketch on the support. Earlier, however, I considered which staff would be the most advantageous: vertical or horizontal? The level seemed more natural due to the greater sense of scale due to the width, but I had the impression that vertically the image would be stronger to perceive and the depth more distinct. Another thing was the composition: how to place the buildings? How to create an urban layout that would reflect the layout, but also not fall into perspective? “Streets” should be done diagonally or straight? Another very important issue is choosing the right lighting. On this point, I had several versions in my head fighting for priority. It may be hard to believe, but in my case it is this stage of work that I consider the hardest and probably the most important. Often these are many hours of reflection, calculation and a series of analyzed sketches. Finally, the outline of the city appeared on the vertical base, in which the most visible street ran straight, and the city itself was situated on two hills, where the first collapsed, giving the possibility of showing further plans, and the second disappeared somewhere deep in the thickening air. I put the lighting slightly on the left side, so that the shadows were filling the square on the left side and the shadows crossed the line of the “street” so that it did not seem too intrusive. I also wanted the rays of light to contrast the objects on the right. From the bottom, I wanted to get the effect of gravity, so that the whole thing shoots strongly from the bottom up. I chose the color at the end and referred to one dream I had a few years ago, where the stage was illuminated with a narcotic blue-greenish light. In the end, the color and the whole work “set” by itself, although in this case the general compositional assumption remained unchanged. In the course of work, a form of “buildings” appeared, which were originally supposed to be tied with some huge, scaled wire resembling more sheaves of hay that fly out of the combine during harvest, but the stains painted at the beginning “suggested” that the “buildings” should bear traces of strong, open damage. To make it look like “buildings” at all, I created old type radio and television antennas. Why such? I have a certain fondness for my childhood and I draw from this period details that I did not distort in this case. While painting, I found that the damage is so sufficient that no windows need to be added. It was supposed to be as dead as possible. I would also like to emphasize the deadness with a withered “tree” in the middle of the square on the left. The first brush strokes of the quadruped figure raised the question: what to choose? Horse or dog? I decided that I would not be particularly concerned with defining the species, but nevertheless it probably looks more like a dog, which perhaps fits more with the whole picture than the kind of “nobility” of a horse that this animal has in our culture. I was also wondering whether to paint the “young” walking beside the howling. Since the “old” was on fire and was supposed to burn from above, it was known that he would die, then adding “young” would theoretically emphasize his loneliness and imminent death, but it was not finally known, so I stayed with the “old” and his certain death. On the other hand, I didn’t want to escalate the drama unnecessarily. The end of a lonely animal’s life seemed enough to me. The rest “painted itself”. So it spontaneously turned out that the animal was going into darkness, as if without much (or maybe quite the opposite!) Awareness that it was burning. At one point, I felt strongly to “close” the image from above. Clouds from a certain height arranged them in this and not another way, and I left them in this form without thinking too much, although I am not sure of their form so far while writing this text. At the very end I added a few street lamps, but I didn’t want to “enliven” the whole thing too much with such details. I found them redundant. They answer the question: “Why does the picture represent what it shows?” – in short, this and the others are a reflection of myself. The city, breathless, perhaps without time, without desires, is a dead place, but it is also a city without the burden of everyday struggle for survival, without problems, without fear for something, for someone, for yourself. Such a place corresponds to a conscious resignation from everything in exchange for the total and eternally certain peace of some undefined, full of aesthetic sensations of a metaphysical existence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=1Q2C94f9sI4