Czwartek, 26 stycznia 2012, godz. 17.00

"Wiktor Górka na tle epoki i fenomenu polskiej szkoły plakatu" - wykład wygłosił Krzysztof Dydo.

Krzysztof Dydo - krakowianin, kolekcjoner i ekspert oraz rzeczoznawca w dziedzinie plakatu w firmie DESA, podróżnik, właściciel Galerii Plakatu w Krakowie. Plakaty kolekcjonuje od 1955 roku. Zbiór jest znany na świecie jako Dydo Poster Collection.

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First, a few words about  "New Optimism".
From my perspective dozens of the paintings sent for this year's "Bielska Jesień" represent a clear trend in painting which I have decided to call "New Optimism". Some of the characteristics of this trend are human figures set against a flat background and accompanied by few objects, and on the other hand, digitally-processed accumulations of dense forms alluding to the oriental stylistics of China and Japan. Among Polish sources of inspiration are paintings by Ewa Kuryluk created in the mid 1970s, and to certain a degree, hyperrealism.

"New Optimism" can be described as a repetition of Kuryluk's style depicting, with the aid of photo media, Western Man surrounded by post-war objects. I was even tempted to make a vivisection of sorts of this immensely popular trend that has dominated "Bielska Jesień 2011" with such a flourish, by writing a pastiche mimicking the style of the 1970s critical review finished off with the writing on the wall that would appear during this Belshazzar's feast of painters. If the alienated objects surrounding alienated people of the 1970s - as in Kuryluk's canonical painting Ik People are Us - appeared to represent certain objects of desire, the same themes today are merely well-recognized symbols of excess, of mass produced goods whose values become relentlessly reduced by the global trends of capitalism.

My plan, however, misfired, as the judges rejected almost all of the works produced in this vein. "New Optimism" ended once we'd seen all of the works sent for the competition. But this ending conforms with my intended message: the optimism of the second half of the 21st century is streaked with undertones of catastrophe, which makes it weak and decadent. We still don't know how much this catastrophe will shake the world of objects, but we have every right to believe that it will effectively shake the world of ideas. 

While viewing the works sent for the biennial, I was also reading the first issue of P/Act for Art: Die Berlin Biennale Zeitung published by Artur Żmijewski and his team. What especially caught my eye was an article by Jan Verwoert comparing Berlin to New York in which the author states that the former is dissimilar to the latter in that "the people here have no means to cherish the illusion that visibility or audience rating creates value". Therefore, I have one final remark about the overwhelming majority of the paintings sent for the competition.

Probably the greatest value that art has to offer contemporary communities is that it remains, despite inauspicious circumstances, one of the last areas of free thinking, creativity, expression and individual courage. The worst thing about the monstrosity I call "New Optimism" is the formatting of art works not only by imitating the styles of successful artists from Poland and abroad, but also by making these works fit comfortably in one white cube of a gallery after another, or even on the wall of one of these new, comfortable and optimistic-looking apartments. This is a way to create mediocre painting for the new non-demanding middle class. The judges in this year's competition strove to make a different choice.

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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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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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