THE BOUNDARIES OF SPACE

 

Instinctively seeking peace and relaxation I run away from the industrial views of neurotic, machine-like cities and I hide somewhere far away, in the vast space of the landscape.

 

Silence, harmonized colours, only a slight, almost imperceptible movements. Tortured senses gradually relieve their activity. This allows me to see clearly the aesthetic dimension of nature. Now the rhythm of the landscape, the observed structure of matter and the expressive colour contrast constitute a coherent wholeness, within which solely individual forms take on meaning. Just free the imagination from the fear of intrusive daub and the landscape extends freely. There are no boundaries for any details. There are no longer trees, benches, churches, chapels, houses and streets here. There is not even a human being. Obvious meanings are blurred because space does not mean anything. It is just being there. The space smells. The space penetrates your skin with its moisture or scratches your throat with dry air. The physical presence constantly accompanies you as soon as you realize it. And the man? As a part of the landscape one suddenly loses validity. Decreases, shrinks, finally collapses into infinity and disappears.

 

My trust in the inner intuition ultimately leads me in the painting to the synthesis and simplification of forms. But this is not the result of any arbitrarily adopted artistic program. Quite the contrary. Painting is usually not guided by logic or any theory. In pursuing further topics I often deliberately give up the knowledge workshop, which should give great comfort. Instead I keep experimenting and searching for new solutions, which reflect better the nature of the theme being developed. I choose this uncertain way, even at the cost of mistakes and failures. That’s why my works are ultimately diverse. Quite as diverse my perception of space, nature, events, and people in different places and circumstances. They are not a coherent artistic expression, but an inconsistent testimony of my sense of the World.

 

Their only common feature is the desire to preserve the freshness of perspective. Thus it is hard to talk about specific creative assumptions, but the purposeful lack of any principles is a creative assumption in itself. Undoubtedly the rejection of unnecessary rules and the inclusion of self-image in the area of life experience is something of an artistic credo. Adopting this perspective allows me to keep observing the World through the eyes of a child constantly surprised by the vastness and complexity of images just seen. Therefore, the next time I stand in front of a blank canvas I always want above all to remain free from prejudices and assumptions; I just want to see and feel. This allows me to approach with my self-image much closer to the World than if I painted everything I know about it. I can confront it on the verge of personal understanding, somewhere between understanding and feeling.

 

Shrouded in silence I am going nowhere. When I listen to the whisper of nature I can only see its bare structure, its amazing wealth of textures and mysterious colourfulness. Recognizing the tense drama of endless landscape, I want to understand and uncover its psychological depth, to know the principle of its dynamics and structure. Naively searching for a meaning of a small piece of space cut out of the wholeness I am still asking fields, meadows and trees about what constitutes its shared uniqueness. And in response I get only my subjective images.

 

Jacek Świgulski
translation: Agata Matusiak

POSTER
VERNISSAGE
EXPOSITION
PAINTINGS

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(Polski) KILKA SŁÓW O WYSTAWIE…

 

Obrazy Jacka Świgulskiego przedstawiają zarys postaci usytuowanych w nieokreślonej przestrzeni.

 

Kolor,  kompozycja, faktura służą artyście do wyrażenia zapisu chwili, emocji, ruchu. Tematem prac Świgulskiego są relacje między ludźmi. Niedopowiedzenie, nieokreśloność, deformacja stanowią główne cechy twórczości artysty.

 

Artysta często ujmuje przedstawienia w dyptyk lub tryptyk. Podkreśla  odrębność  każdej sylwetki. Stara się uwydatnić niezależność  każdej z figur, poświęcając każdej z postaci osobne płótno. Zaznacza indywidualność jednostki w relacji z drugim człowiekiem. Wspaniale pokazuje ruch, gesty, dzięki którym możemy odczytać zasugerowane sytuacje, np. taniec, rozmowę, intymne uniesienia kochanków.

 

Twórczość Jacka Świgulskiego cechuje wyjątkowa wrażliwość i wyczucie kompozycji. Za pomocą tych środków nadaje przedstawianym scenom nieuchwytną, tajemniczą atmosferę, która pozwala oderwać się od codzienności.

 

Galeria Katarzyny Napiórkowskiej

Poznań 2013

POSTER

PERCEIVED

 

Jacek Świgulski paintings presented in the gallery have been created over several years from 2009 (Bathing she, Sleeping she or A Dreamer) to 2013, when the artist painted the entire series entitled Cats.

 

The first impression that the paintings gathered in the exhibition evoke is a sense of a great diversity. The impression remains strong despite a consistent style and strong creative personality of the artist. It is clear that the paintings belong to different periods and cycles in the works of Jacek Świgulski. Some of them are developing and closing earlier issues of interest to him while others are open to new possibilities and artistic research. They share a common feature, though. They are a visual proof of a painter balancing between two concepts of a work of art: a psychological and phenomenological one. And the balancing is an ongoing study on whether the image is „an extension of thought and experience of its creator”, or an object produced by the artist’s intention, which converts the matter, which is its foundation. A painting entitled Dancing she is an extremely readable, even literal confirmation of the artistic struggles and choices, maybe even an artistic confession, or as the artist emphasizes a kind of a self-portrait. The painting shows a tightrope walker wearing a harlequin costume struggling to keep balance. The image is the key to artist’s paintings ordering and linking together all the objects presented in the exhibition. It explains the co-existence of compositions like A dream or A talk next to the Cats cycle.

 

Perceived – the title of the exhibition seems to be significant as well – the very form of the verb suggests the end of a process. The process, the source of which lies in the surrounding world and the end result is a selected and processed by the artist fragment present on the canvas, is shown as a sign, synthesis, an elusive note. The sign in a condensed form is subject to painting and compositional efforts.

 

The number of objects extracted from the surrounding reality and transferred by the artist to the surface of a painting is small. Sometimes it is a single human figure or two heavily stylized ones slanting towards each other or a stain of colour, which suggests an outline shape of an animal or object. The artist’s full attention focuses on them, therefore the recipient’s as well.

 

This quantitative synthesis is perfectly suited to the form of Jacek Świgulski visual works. Compositionally they are extremely clean and clear. The painter uses a flat patch of colour, often distinguishing shapes with clearly marked lines, thus reducing the shapes to the simplest, explicitly clear signs. This allows objects and characters depicted on the abstract, devoid of references to the reality background, become meaningful. Suspended in an indefinite space, as if they existed at various levels, the paintings are a kind of cut-outs in which individual elements abstracted from the real world have been compiled into a new artistic story.

 

The artist is not afraid of striking and strong colour combinations. Sometimes subtle, pastel colours are combined with broken and soiled ochre and sometimes dark, deep, almost black background of his paintings bring out even more patches of pure resounding colour. It is the colour of a very high impact and intensity which attracts and invites a recipient to submit to the excitement of artistic works by Jacek Świgulski.

 

Anna Niedzielska
translation: Agata Matusiak

POSTER
VERNISSAGE
EXPOSITION
PAINTINGS

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