To begin with, I would like to point out that assessing someone else's work is a very difficult and risky task. You can easily hurt the artist, expose the audience to something of poor quality, or even disgrace yourself. One way or another, the assessor invariably feels uncomfortable and they have to explain themselves in the end.

Generally speaking, I consider painting a very good activity, and I am happy to see so many people create paintings. They send them to competitions, exhibit them in galleries, and often devote all their energy to the creating process. Unfortunately, the chances of success in this field are very small, especially considering that no one will ever make a decent living out of painting. 

That is why I have great respect for all the artists who ignore such problems and refuse to toss their brushes and paints aside, but continue to create art works with the persistence of a Don Quixote. They do it because they must, because they have something important to say. Such zeal, albeit rarely appreciated by audiences, deserves admiration. It makes you want to look and hope to see something wonderful among the flood of mediocrity; something like the truth, a window to a better world,  absolute beauty, and other such aspects which are always difficult to define.

Of course, respect for the artist is one thing, but it the audience that is the most important player in the game. Without the audience there would be no exhibition or even a single work of art. And you have to be honest, especially with the ones you respect. That's why we have decided to show respect for the audience and not exhibit any works that bear even small traces of mediocrity. The works we have selected for the exhibition and nominated for awards are all original and innovative, contributing to the debate about painting and the contemporary world in general.

On the other hand, it is difficult to tell a fake painting from an original. There is no problem if we're dealing with the production of, say, expensive handbags. Then we just make a model and anything that doesn't conform is a fake. But the opposite is true in art; if something is very similar to something else that's already been created, then it's a fake. Art should not be similar to anything, even to art itself. We often looked at a given painting and found similarities - usually to another work by an artist who had already succeeded. Such copying always proves fatal. Unfortunately, we've seen many examples of a poor imitation of the style, form or language used previously by recognized artists. Well, it's nothing new. Those less gifted have always imitated those more talented, hoping that maybe just a little bit of this fame and talent will rub off on them, too. The only thing that's new today is the scale of the phenomenon. We see a whole category of young artists who believe they will make easy money by copying those who've already succeeded. They should know that there are other areas where more money can be earned faster. They've only got to look around.

However, I believe the most serious problem today is digitization. What undoubtedly should serve as an aid in dealing with overwhelming quantities of art works has become a curse. On the one hand, it is no longer necessary to physically post, handle and then send back hundreds of kilograms of painted material, but as we all know, every improvement creates new problems. Not all paintings look good in photographs. There are subtleties which can only be seen and appreciated by direct contact. That's why I fear we might have overlooked something valuable. On the other hand, we tried hard and, fortunately, the Rules in their great wisdom allowed us to make a two-part selection. After we had chosen the photos, we were able to compare them with the originals.

And then came disappointment. Many paintings looked better on a computer screen than in reality.

On the other hand, as you can find out for yourself, some of the works proved surprisingly good. They stood  the test of digital selection and turned out to be equally good, or even better in the original.

I hope the paintings we have chosen are intriguing for the audience for a variety of reasons. Perhaps it is variety that constitutes one of the greatest values of the 40th Painting Biennial "Bielska Jesień".

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