About the author and the results of his brains' fermentation



Reality


Unfortunately - R is a mad, full of contradictions, unconscious, self-driven and self-distructing machine - the beauty of fractals and hopelessness of entropy. A place begging for Merciful God - but where is He ? That was in terms of the Universe. In terms of "Humanity" "R" should be replaced with "r" - a ruinous and crowded bus hurrying to nobody knows where but you can be sure it's a bad place. The bus driver is holding one leg on the acceleration and the other on the brake at the same time. The rules are set by "civilization" - particularly politics often using religion for its purposes. But truly the Puppet Master who stands behind are genes and hormones. For most of the bus passengers ethics remains only a theory because they have only taken the first step on the way from animal instincts to divinity. A step long enough to destroy the balance of the only accessible world through excessive population growth and consumption. So far one can't get out of our bus in principle. Some people, however, understand that the rules in the bus can be changed. They can even be better, better than those ruling the consumption pyramid - the essence of each political system - including the pride of the West: democracy. The term "consumption" in the last sentence was used in a purely animal manner: eating powerless ones by predators. It's funny: this "consumption" is opposite to "consumption" meaning consuming of goods and culture what can be associated with freedom ! Above mentioned "some people" may be divided into two groups: feeling, aware, understanding, gifted and strong (minority) and feeling, aware, understanding but weak and not gifted. The latter group can't change the world according to their own visions and they don't accept the role imposed upon them by the others. A possible solution is to escape to the Wonderland. This is possible by creating and consumption (!) of things having questionable references to rEALITY, such as:



Art


The status of art in the contemporary "civilized" world is different from the one in "primitive" communities. In the West for example, successful artists are idolized. In the caste system their position is miserable. The explanation is simple: in primitive communities there are fewer possibilities or even inclination to be a personality. The art is a kind of (handi)craft there. It is produced rather than created. This process is instinctive and many people are involved in it. The works of art are rather standardized and evolve slowly. The gap between life and art is not big. In western culture changes come rapidly and are often pathological. There is a small group of successful artists and a bigger group of unlucky ones. Another group are art consumers. The mechanics determining artistic success is often pathological, too. The art can be a pleasant passion or snobbery to those who succeeded in life. To the others it can be a positive form of escapism. Fantastic and surrealistic components of art play an exceptional part: they determine the independence and originality of art - its ability to create virtual realities. Many people tried to create such realities. It also has happened to:



Author


I was born in 1961. I live in Poland. I have no artistic education. The pictures shown here are only an episode in my life. This episode lasted in years 1983-2000 (with long breaks). After the last strain in year 2000 the only modest individual exhibition took place. I decided to stop this kind of activity because I am not good enough to make money being an artist or "artist". Here I must remark that I really think sometimes (and even often) the connection between the value of a work of art and the money people want to pay fot it is rather theoretical. There are many excellent and cheap works of art to buy so you don't need to toil at painting for example. On the other hand I think some of my formal ideas are worth presentation - not because of technique but the visions themselves. I used a simple known surrealistic technique to create such visions: mental automatism. I don't want my pictures to mean anything. I only would like them to take one's eyes off from the everyday problems for a moment. Some pictures have titles but these titles are coincidential - I associated the visual effect with some ideas. So, it's a specific kind of symbolism or rather it's not symbolism at all. I call it "a posteriori symbolism". The gallery of graphics covers about one fifth of all my drawings and the gallery of painting about a half of pictures I have ever painted (all of them are oil ones). I have also painted some portraits, nudes and copies of known pictures. I like different kinds of art but surrealism is my favourite one. I like mad Dali's pictures, poetical art of Ernst and quite different formal experiments of Matta and Bellmer. From Polish artists I like "classical" Siudmak and Beksinski but the latter because of his technique and some structures, not because of nightmarish themes which negate the ideas of surrealism (aim for freedom which I consider the most important thing). I tried to be original but it is not always possible - especially for those who were born several dozens of years too late (as me). If I continued painting I would like my works to be as differentiated as possible so as to make people think these works were done by many creators.