Light.Matter: The Intersection of Photography and Printmaking
May 8 - June 2, 2018
FAB Gallery, University of Alberta, Edmonton
Grunwald Gallery of Art | School of Art + Design | Indiana University
1201 E 7th St. Bloomington, IN 47405 | 812 855 8490 | grunwald@indiana.edu
1/
For the first time I used authentic documents, letters, envelopes and photographs from
the time of WW II that belonged to my family. I was a student of Graphic Arts at the Higher
School of Fine Arts in Poznań. I discovered the power of document. My diploma
/remembering/repeating/ were these works and paintings using a light-sensitive canvas.
It was 1972, I was 24 years old, I lived in a country of communist regime, but I felt free
and I wanted to make graphics and films and I felt like a discoverer.
2/
Probably because I lived behind the Iron Curtain I was fascinated by everything that
seemed to me new and elusive. I am still the same curious person.
3/
In the seventies and eighties I was fascinated by conceptual art, but also pop-art. These
two opposing trends set me very well between clear thinking and the freedom of combining
different ideas and technologies. It is possible that conceptual art directed me in a way
towards such tools as a photo camera and a camera.
4/
In Poland one of the more important exhibitions was an International Graphic Biennial in
Cracow. In the seventies and eighties, during the world graphic art boom I saw there world
famous artists, Americans, Japanese, Yugoslavians and Canadians. In Cracow I fortunately
bought a few graphic artifacts-for example the admired graphic Family by Tetsuo Noda,
which I look at every day at home and I sometimes think what they look like today.
I was over the moon when -in my opinion -a distinguished University of Alberta in
Edmonton asked me to realize some of my works. This was where my big format SECRET
I, II and III were created in 1989. I am incredibly grateful to them for this moment of
creative work.
5/
I think that mix is creative when it respects the tool of original record-photography. When
you hide its power by adding manual virtuosity, the works often become just an aesthetic
form and then I ask why the artist is caught in-between and I think he speaks several
languages as if he wanted to be better understood and did not quite believe in the
intelligence of the audience.
6/
Luckily for me I do not get attached to any particular technology. I go where I can find
something most interesting for me at the particular moment in life.
That is why I realize monumental multimedia installations, I made a film in NYC /50’/The
case of Josephine H… in 2014, I wrote a book /Hybrid/2015, i made a film Poison/2017, and I am working -together with five young artists-on a film /Love Stories-Radio Weather/.
I keep looking for didactically interesting confrontation with students in the Studio of Film
and Performative Activity, at the Faculty of Multimedia Communication, Poznań University
of Arts.
7/
Art keeps changing and I am sure it will keep surprising us-as long as there are people
open to searching without borders.