Degree show 2009
Do you think she’s talented? Deeply and importantly talented?
Asks Audrey Hepburn in the cult film. Same question comes to mind when you attend the painting degree show 2009. The importance of this question lies in its tone.
You can sense the works of young geniuses, however immature they still might be. Above all, they reek of talent. What was shown at the degree show 2009 of the Faculty of Painting reeks of good grammar, learned syntax, the influence of many well known and carefully studied paintings, the respect for small but active master professors. Salieri from Forman?s movie might as well ride down the corridors in his squeaky wheelchair; the prophet and patron of mediocrity. The spooky castle, which is what the Painting Faculty has been turned into, is now full of all kinds of horrors ? from unintentional pastiches of the works of professors? and local celebrities, through dreadfully serious pseudo impressionism attempts, bordering at the level of those amateur masterworks you can find in the Old Town or at a flea market on a Sunday afternoon (hall on the 2nd floor), to the parody of Spiral Jetty ? conceptualism basing on the lack of concept of any kind (the first couple of rooms on the 1st floor), amateurish photorealism examples, and epigone studio creations. This exhibition is a valid test telling us exactly how camp we are, basically there is no other way to protect ourselves from these fallen academic daubs.
There are two exceptions, both of them extreme. The first one (leaving a very good impression) is a set of works by Sabina Błażejowska, who, unlike her peers, made the effort of mastering her technique and, what is equally important, she puts some thought into her creative activity. Her works are carefully thought out in detail, conceptually coherent and rich. They are divided in two parts, paintings and new media art works. Both are focused, very appropriately in the light of the exhibition as a whole, on the self-sufficiency of a part in a mass, one in a series. The paintings, referring to photorealism in technique, were put together in one block. It is a series of medium-sized paintings, featuring stylised shoes, which thanks to the artists technical skill get a new meaning, on the one hand they become an excuse for showing off with it, on the other hand - an elegant allusion to Truth in Painting, as well as to the classic van Gogh?s shoes analysed by Heidegger. The positioning of the quadrangle paintings in a seamless block without any neutral space between them makes us perceive the whole thing as an abstract painting composed of figurative elements. Similar experiments, definitely bringing to mind pixels creating digital pictures, were conducted by Szczerbowski. My personal interpretation comes straight from ?This is Not a Pipe?, only instead ?Campbell, Campbell, Campbell? I would write ?Converse, Converse, Converse?. A transition from consumption to mysticism has a certain charm.
The second part of the portfolio, in New Media, is not disappointing either. It consists of several sets of small sized pictures ? frames from Sabina?s films ? put together in lines. This time the sets are separated by single white frames which gives a certain regularity to the composition, as well as helps present each set of frames as an entity of its own. This is not the only effort taken to make the frames self-sufficient within the series, the titles, carefully printed and stuck underneath each single one, perform a similar function. Perhaps it is the author?s response to the frozen frames by John Mekas.
Her works, interpretational fertility and visible proficiency in conceptual code aside, have one more quality worth mentioning, that is visual beauty ? so scarce throughout the rest of the exhibition.
The other exception is a perfect example of the kind of fraud that conceptual art enables. I am talking about ?A Man?, an installation by Paweł Sysiak. In “Obieg” (Polish art magazine), Adam Mazur wrote: “I will not attempt a description, let alone an analysis of Paweł Sysiak’s work, my apologies to the author and our readers. It is just very complicated, apart from a sheet of paper with professor Tarasewicz “painting” a completely different picture installation. Let us accept it as a part of some in-studio discourse, a settlement with the tutor. Surely the two of them know what it means.”
Well, somehow I do not share this certainty, I am rather aware that someone is trying to beat around the bush here, but what, about what? I see a great amount of fashionable buzzwords, admittedly gracefully arranged into something that is supposed to look like an artistic dialogue, but nothing more. More importantly, despite being somewhat erudite person, I cannot decode Sysiak?s riddles and ideas. Perhaps the way it is displayed is wrong. I still do not know whether the installation should be looked at in full light or in the darkness, with only a couple of position lights; that I got both opportunities during the exhibition? The way objects are put together evokes strong associations with a hardware store catalogue. The way of interpretation following Monika Sosonowska’s works, the only one that seems adaptable while looking at the installation, makes Sysiak look like an ordinary epigone. Perhaps it is the fault of the lack of text of any kind; during the MA defence the work was introduced by the author?s extensive presentation. What is puzzling, is that without this parergon, it is beyond interpretation. How many scraps of fashionable theories does the author have to throw at us to enter public discourse? I do hope the case here is not the same as with the paintings by Sławomir Pawszak, whose theories that go with them never fail to bring a lot of joy in the faculty next door (that is the Faculty of Philosophy), as delicious caricatures of phenomenology. Until I get my hands on that parergon, I cannot help but consider this work a stylised presentation of bathroom elements referring to Kobro?s aesthetics, acceptable maybe at Industrial Design but definitely not at Sculpture.
The dependence of art work on the discursive aspect directs my thoughts towards supervisors and art dealers, and what follows, towards the final question from the same cult film: Do you think she’s handsomely paid?
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