In my opinion, the 40th Painting Biennial "Bielska Jesień 2011" has proven quite conservative and, at the same time, predictable. We've seen a number of well-known, recognizable trends - from the symbolic and photographic realism, through the new pop and "kitsch", to classic geometry and elements of the neo geo. We've also seen more expressive paintings mixing fauvism and symbolism; we've seen "Curlicues", "Tsunamis", "Frosty Paintings", "Megalopolis", "Catechism of a Revolutionary", and many more. Although high in number, these works poorly represent the young generation of Polish painters. The list of absentees includes those "tired of reality" and therefore otherwise engaged; those striving to combine painting with other media, or to express painting through other media; and those ready to compromise the so-called purity in order to create something which can be more easily categorized as art in general than painting in particular. I'm sure there are more missing elements, but that's not the whole point. The most fundamental problem we're facing is the "surplus production" -  thousands of new paintings that can hardly be considered art. Probably most of them will never fall into that realm, but will always be categorised simply as painted pictures. The judges reviewed 387 paintings by the same number of artists, and selected only those works that carry some meaning beyond the mainstream - it was a daunting task.  

From my own perspective, the consensus on the choice of the three finalists reflects the general mood and expectations of this year's biennial. The classic attitudes represented by the finalists and characterised by a relative purity of visual expression reflect more general trends that are currently dominant among young artists.

Undoubtedly, the Grand Prix winner, Jakub Ciężki, represents a unique purity and power of visual expression. Additionally, his realistic paintings contain something that I would call an exceptional conceptual state which results in radical decisions about the purity of form. Consequently, the form becomes sterile and uniform, abstracted from the surroundings. The scaffolding depicted by the artist takes the form of a naturalistic, structuralized object which belongs in the realm of "super-reality". Its identity is far more important than that of hundreds of other scaffoldings on construction sites. Jakub Ciężki found a sliver of industrial reality and turned it into a meaningful set of motifs which has become the canon of this painting. Radiators, letterboxes, playground ladders and wire fences - all these make a bizarre world filled with an original collection of steel, rusty, colourful, sterile and paint-spattered objects which form the core of his painting.

Another finalist Paweł Matyszewski wants his works to be perceived as skin "clothing" the canvas. The artist creates biological and at the same time abstract structures wrapped in bodily colours, which pulsate, vibrate and appear to have a depth, to be multilayered. The surface is covered with tiny smudges resembling some kind of veins, dark spots, possibly representing freckles, or holes and cuts in the canvas alluding to some serious laceration or other damage to the skin. Tattoos, bruises, broken bones, haemorrhages, secretions and growing hair - all of these, hidden in his paintings, provide reference to corporeality which can also be perceived as a cultural fabric. The status of the human body becomes oblique and ambiguous. Matyszewski himself describes his paintings as "biological templates" and "body maps" that form the field of his artistic game which also includes the viewer.

Finally, there is Kamila Woźniakowska - an artist slightly older than the other participants of the biennial, who graduated from the University of Montreal and currently lives in Canada. Perhaps it was different experience that has made her painting style different from that of all the other entrants. Her award-winning paintings Catechism of a Revolutionary and Jenny were based on literature - the former on the 1869 novel of the same title by Sergey Nechayev, and the latter by Berthold Brecht's Threepenny Opera. Having said that, the stories she tells through her paintings are not direct reflections of these books. The artist's visual imagery is only loosely based on different textual phrases in them. The monochromatic or black and white paintings show various scenes which might of course be described in a narrative way, but it is the visual message that is the most essential, and this is how these works should be "read".

To summarise, I must say that such a large number of paintings entered for the competition meant that something else had to be compromised. Now, with all the discussions and decisions made, I know I would much rather view at least two types of geometric paintings than the so-called "realistic" ones whose number was just a bit too high. Of course, everything can change in two year's time; there might be completely different dominant trends. I think realism, in all its varieties, is too overwhelming to last for another two years.

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