"Forward" by David Moos
'In/pulse'- push from inside.
Impulses precede physical action, still almost invisible, was already
born in the body. It is this, the impulse (...) In reality, the
physical action, if not begun by an impulse, becomes something conventional,
almost like gesture. When we work on the impulses, everything becomes
rooted in the body.
--Jerry Grotowski, 'Conference at Liege,' 1986
Although Jerry Grotowski, the great Polish dramatist and theorist,
is here reflecting upon how an actor might train the body in preparation
for performance, his ideas become provocative when applied to the
act of painting. By examining the foundation from which action begins,
and understanding this morpheme of motion as a meaningful 'impulse,'
grotowski seeks to map an interiority for the body that may be directed,
studied and formed. If the actor's art is to deploy the body as
primary instrument within the arena of the theater, so the painter's
might stem from how the body becomes the primary agent articulating
paint's substance.
The paintings of Wlodzimierz Ksiazek manifest an imtimate knowledge
of the body. This knowledge is left everywhere evident: in the recessed
substructures that organize space, on the scabrous surfaces that
abrade in ceaseless juxtaposition, and, with the occasional, timed
occurrence of stranded shards of color. These separate features
that comprise each work are simultaneously present, posed as integral.
Although the images Ksiazek's paintings produce appear to be preoccupied
with states of erosion and processes of repeal, the surfaces are
in fact additive, resulting from a succession of applications. Over-painting
and accumulation are the hallmarks of his method, and it is this
insistence on a perpetual, forward-moving process that links his
work to the movements of the body. The body operates sequentially.
Its actions cannot be undone in time. Adherence to and acceptance
of this constraint inscribes all of Ksiazek's work. A common method
of construction prevails throughout the current group of paintings,
most of which are large in format. Some appear to be metallic, the
result of molten processes that have cooled, congealed into cauterized
dense masses. Others are preoccupied with the inscription of architectonic
motifs and exploit the allure of surface to re-assert the power
of generative geometries.
Regardless of each work's complexion, all of the paintings declare
their status as arrested expositions of formation, displaying a
traceable syntax of modulated application. The exposed, legible
construction of the paintings' image is meant to give us access
to the formative realm. Here, within the intricacies of each image,
we are led to experience the drama of making.
Ksiazek's lucid application of oil paint layer upon layer, allows
us to retrace each work's construction - as displayed in, for example,
two large paintings, the greyed-ocher and whitish work measuring
80 x 100 inches and the leaden green 80 x 90 inch canvas. The decision-making
regime that governs each image is born deep within the artist's
body. As the surfaces become inflected, amended and altered - oily
drips marking their complexion and palette-knifed material sweeping
across their skins - the painter's body-network of movement is registered
and made manifest.
If such descriptive terminology resonates closely with the prior
language of high modernism, this merely reflects the inescapable
imprint of language's residue. Ksiazek is neither mining nor miming
the familiar grandiloquent terrain of Abstract Expressionism. He
is rather intent on exploring the limits of his highly evolved corporeal
reality. His work functions as the agitated template of impulse
which, as Grotowski postulates, becomes profound only when it is
rigorously ' rooted in the body.' There are no 'gestures' in Ksiazek's
work. Instead, each image bears the intensity of 'in/pulse,' the
placing of movements that have originated from within the measured
depths of a well-trained artist - an artist who has worked on the
meaning of a specific set of actions. In this regard, paint is simply
the outcome or carrier of the artist's more internal, essential
actions.
While commentators have cast Ksiazek as ' an inveterate psycho-formalist'
whose work speaks in 'universalist terms,' or construed his project
in material terms as heir to the encrustations of 'early Dubuffet,
Tapies and several of their Polish followers,' his work seeks rather
a separate, more personal intensity. By endeavoring to elaborate
the impulse, to achieve a plane of initiation where intention and
its pronunciation are merged, Ksiazek opens and reveals the self
for expression.
Ksiazek has never applied titles to any of his paintings. Such
an insistence on sheer actuality frees the work from the towering
weight of twentieth century abstraction. Unlike an artist such as
Anselm Kiefer, whose us of titling over-determines the content of
painting, Ksiazek's reticence over verbally designating painting
releases each work from a historical foundation. Without titles
painting cannot be fixed into familiar referential territory. No
landscapes, no memories, no cultural associations...to engage these
works we must undertake a direct approach. We must consent not to
mediate encounter with the freight of our own allusions.
Only because of extenuating circumstances regarding the custody
of his young daughter has Ksiazek, in an unprecedented move, elected
to deploy an umbrella title for the current exhibition: ' Hostage.'
This word, igniting connotations of iniquitous power, is plaintive,
poignant, desperate. It becomes a vector that links the work to
a state of deprivation, a personal emergency.
Until now Ksiazek has carefully refrained from allowing any political
undercurrent to affect his work. As a Solidarity-era, self-willed
exile from Poland, it would have been all too easy for Wlodimierz
Ksiazek to infuse his abstract work with the oppressive cloak of
his East European upbringing. Opting to pursue his own project -
to experience and elaborate the contours of physical action - his
evolution as an artist over the past two decades has been unfettered,
bound only by the unfurling of his lived knowledge in paint. Now
a single word, 'Hostage', resides along the horizon of painting's
implication. In the twilight of this century, the grim motif of
an artist without options shapes our approach to Ksiazek's recent
body of work. Painting becomes the artist's emotional ransom, fraught
with an urgent intensity. If one follows this metaphor it becomes
clear that as a hostage, the artist has only his body. He must work
solely with this, his final resource. And similarly, to access Ksiazek's
work, so too must we also rely upon our own bodies. Only with body
experience can we replicate the encounter of making. Again with
Grotowski we observe: 'before physical action, there is the impulse,
which pushes from inside the body.' To travel Ksiazek's surfaces
and inhabit their space, we must follow the artist's visible actions,
mapping and retracing the visibly accrued image . We must experience
how our eyes anticipate the flow of the image, from ideation, to
impulse, to mark. In essence, this is the chain of cognizant motion
that Ksiazek's work seeks to elucidate. As a painter, he wants to
reveal to us - his collaborative audience - the texture of the body's
time.
To attain this sophisticated level of performance, Ksiazek has
invested heavily in a corpus of reiterated movements, evidenced
by those now recognizable, registered layers of carved, brushed,
smeared and arrested paint. Ksiazek's adherence to the intricate,
evocative power of these continuous actions forges an integrated
totality that refuses to privilege isolated gestures. Each painting
configures all actions, both large and minute, as simultaneously
relevant, valuable. The visibly apparent holistic presence of the
paintings' surfaces allows us to witness how an image comes to exist,
in the separate realities each of us make.
Monographic Publication: Wlodzimierz Ksiazek: Paintings. Jaffe-Friede
& Strauss Galleries, Hopkinson Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover,
NY, April 14- May 10, 1998. Text by Donald Kuspit. Published by
Dartmouth College, NH (Library of Congress # 2002449208) |