Jerzy Madeyski 

Jarodzki’s Art

Konrad Jarodzki is a traditional painter, meaning that he is faithful to the painting plane and technique which applies primarily paint and a paintbrush, though he is no stranger to other means of expression. He is the one who implemented the concept of the border between land art and intervention into the existing reality hanging a tape over a gorge blinding against a dark sky. In this activity, he maintained faithful to his basic assumptions – not formal – as ultimately the form of every good work is only a way of expressing certain content. The tape did in fact differ significantly from his paintings recently displayed in Zielona Góra and Wrocław. It is connected with them, however, by something else something important: a climate of unrest and certain paradox.

This is what his paintings are really like. Most basically, they can be classified as belonging to abstract surrealism as they depict both space – typical of this movement – aura of incredible and indefinable phenomenon which enables the viewers transferred inside the entrails of cosmic Leviathan to fantasize. This is what El Greco used to do with similar flashes of phenomenal light cast on the clouds which look like inner organs of a giant and similar space built by different perspectives.

In Jarodzki’s works, the twisted, snake-like shapes run inside the painting; sometimes they convey distant erotic references, intensified by monochromatic roses, and sometimes look like blue creatures of animate and inanimate matter. They are ambiguous – disturbing, even disgusting, but at the same time beautiful in their colours and precise visual artwork. Do they reflect the complex personality of the author which is torn between affirmation and negation, expression and aesthetics, or did they result from speculations? The answer, actually already obvious, is confirmed by ink drawings. Built of geometrical forms, primarily black, filled with parallel lines, they act decidedly expressively, without any undertones or doubts. They also express the duality of the message: axial or cross symmetry suggests peace. The strong contrast between black and white suggests motion and action.

Jarodzki’s art must be liked at first sight. No wonder – it’s performed by an exquisite artist. More important things, however, take place inside it under the smooth surface of the painting – in the realm of imagination and feelings – and this is its layer that should draw our attention.

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

SOURCE:

Text originally published in: Życie Literackie 1972, no. 26, p. 3.