Konrad Jarodzki on his work

My painting is concerned with space. By creating an illusion of space as convincing as possible, I want to express the falsehood of the apparent metamorphosis of the picture plane into a picture-as-window. The disappearance of the picture-as-object and its elevation to the stimulus of emotions enables the viewer to forget about the real situation (viewer – space – picture) and believe in a new situation (viewer – space – space). The emotional space that exists between the viewer and the artwork should expand to efface the picture plane and, consequently, the picture itself. “The viewer facing the canvas gets automatically placed at some point in the ongoing process of spatial integration. It proceeds from the point located at an indefinite distance far behind his back and the matter expands forward towards a vanishing point that suggests the bodies disappearing into a non-extant horizon and far beyond. The three-dimensional rendering of the intervening forms creates the feeling of being sucked into the space.”

The above passage addresses a number of aspects I find important: the viewer’s participation in the action, the sensation of being drawn inside and surrendering to the suggestion of motion, whether absolute motion with no points of reference provided or the experienced relative motion. The motif I employ in my paintings to express space are sequences of apparently “organic” convex forms: the nest or “swarm of perfectly dead bodies” as one reviewer has described them. My choice of such elements has been dictated by their “usefulness” in expressing the continuity and elasticity of matter in space and the integration of the two elements. The absence of precisely defined boundaries between the material forms and the spatial vacuum that surrounds them emphasises the universe’s structural unity and the possibility of reducing all phenomena to one value or essence possessing the characteristics of matter, space, and time.

Time in my painting is likewise expressed through an illusion, the illusion of motion. Any motion enfolding in time exists as a record of the instance in which the slow movement of forms expresses and suggests the eternal volatility of configurations. The rendered configuration of matter is but one of an infinite number of possibilities: it is a form in time. By creating such time-and-space situations, I try to suggest that the viewer’s particular location and point of station are in no way privileged. Forms and space are ubiquitous and may be observed from any point and at any time – the universe’s cosmological immutability is an important element in my works. Francastel has observed that the aesthetic and conceptual approaches to space in the art of the past are no longer adequate today, to the present state of knowledge and social reality. He envisions the need for a new space: “The new space cannot be purely physical (flexibility, depth) or purely symbolic. The Renaissance was also born of the fusion of studies in geometry and mystical speculation.” I think that the new space envisioned by Francastel should likewise be founded on two factors, one scientific, rational and physical, the other psychological. The technique is another indispensable element of artistic action as it constitutes a “model for action”, a way to transform and express the world. Gillo Dorfles in his Multiplied Man insists that every technical element has an artistic component, and every artistic element has a technological aspect. The manner of execution, this “model for action”, plays an important role in my painting. 

Space, movement, and light – these three concepts are often referred to in contemporary art, sometimes in a very literary sense: the artists work with real spaces, real light, and real – that is physical – motion. In my paintings, these three concepts are rendered as ideas. The space is illusory, motion only suggested, and light painted. I also use the other components of the picture, like line, colour, and value, in a different way. The sensory perception of a spatial illusion is conditioned by extremely subtle gradation of colour values and seemingly imperceptible variations in colour saturation. My approach to colour is thus more photographic than painterly. My technique of condensing surface lines to emphasise the rounded shapes of spatial elements has analogies in op-art but the objective is different in each case: there, it is used to interfere with ordered arrangements and disturb them, while I am concerned with organising and rendering the logic of construction of forms in space. The method of execution, although reflecting the chosen instrument, is informed by artistic freedom, that is its role in relation to the idea is not subsidiary: it influences the form expressing the idea and thus co-generates the idea itself. Congruence between technique and idea creates an appearance of facility, a certain virtuosity, or – as Gillo Dolores calls it – “Jonglerie”. Well, Witold Gombrowicz has reminded us that there is nothing more difficult in art than facility. Considering artistic expression, one must address the artist’s inner experience, the psychological background, determining his or her attitudes and actions, that have been shaped by external reality. Some have interpreted my art as an expression of anxiety in the face of an unknown but surely approaching cataclysm, others have seen it as evoking a volatile situation and uncertain future. Doubtless, my paintings may be regarded as “inner landscapes” underlain by anxiety. As Jerzy Madeyski has observed, they are heterogeneous and ambiguous: “In Jarodzki’s paintings, the serpentine. snake-like forms penetrate into the pictorial space: they may carry erotic allusions, reiterated by monochromatic pink colour schemes, or emerge like blue creatures verging between animate and inanimate matter. They are ambiguous, disturbing and even repulsive and at the same time strangely beautiful in their refined colour orchestrations and precise finish. Are they reflections of the artist’s complex personality, torn between affirmation and negation, expression and aesthetics or products of detached speculation?” I myself find it difficult to determine whether the world I render in my paintings is the object of my affirmation or negation and rejection. Doubtless, mankind’s current situation, with all its achievements. challenges, and calamities, like space missions, nuclear and environmental threats, the ability to recreate or approach in laboratory experiments such absolutes as the speed of light, temperature of the Sun or beginning of life, must inspire the artists to assume an open attitude, express anxiety, and re-create new worlds in their work. I hope that my painting expresses at least some of this anxiety, the conflict containing the elements of both affirmation and negation.

25 August 1975

Translated by: Małgorzata Możdżyńska-Nawotka, Katarzyna Mironowicz, ACR – Centrum Tłumaczeń Specjalistycznych

SOURCE:

Text originally published in: Konrad Jarodzki. Nadchodzi, exhibition catalogue, Wrocław: National Museum in Wrocław, 2008, p.4.