Sławek Brzoska (Poland)

Materia Prima II (2009)

Programme: Fire protection public source, plac Zwycięstwa Available from 19.03.09

Born in 1967 in Szopienice (Upper Silesia). Studied at the Institute Of Art of the Silesian University , branch in Cieszyn. Since 1997 he has been employed at the  Academy of Fine  Arts in Poznań, he is in charge of IXth Studio of Sculpture and Spatial Actions. He realised and took part in over 100 individual and group exhibitions in Poland and abroad. His last big enterprise was a year-long, lonely journey around the world: A Year of a Wandering Life.

My artistic quests focus on the issue of a Way, a journey . I hadn't, however , realised that at the beginning.  Weaving geometrical figures with kilometres of string, I have always emphasised the moment of work over the final effect. Work in the secluded gallery was a kind of meditation, when I had to watch almost every step, keep an eye on the tension of more and more lines, their parallelism. It required concentration on what is here – and – now. I have realised at some point that I am doing no less than travel, wandering in the spaces between the points set on walls, the floor and the ceiling in advance.
The three-dimensional drawing is a trace of my body and hands left in the space. The installation is an image of wandering I had done, to the world that was visualised at its end.
I am trying to make the installation – a journey belonging closely to the space it is created in. The space is a kind of vessel which I fill in with the installation. I do not repeat the configuration in other spaces. Each work is based on different construction rules, dependent on natural characteristics I encounter in the space. I pay attention to architecture, construction details, windows' arrangement, lighting etc., to find a form which will enter a dialogue with the surroundings. I often use ultraviolet lighting, as well. I intuitively relate building the installation to Hindu mythology saying that the whole Universe exists between Brahma's inhale and exhale. Space then is a cosmic space where the micro-world is visualised.  That is the inhalation.  The exhalation is the coiling of the installation into a ball. The only thing left behind is a ball of string inside which I put a slide showing the previous situation. One may see it through a little whole inside the ball. This final object has hallmarks of a fruit and the slide inside – just like a seed – is both the memory of the installation and its potential. Similar to the Hindu mythology regarding the Universe existence described here is an Indo – Tibetan concept of the human mind, according to which a human – like a spider's web – unravels a world from himself to draw it back after achieving self-realisation.
No less important in my experiencing the world is real travelling. As far as building installations with a string is a harmonious journey, an ordered one, happening between meticulously measured and set points, real journeys are intuitive and improvised. I travel mostly in Asia, where I subject myself to situations found there. I look for contact with the peoples for whom wandering, nomadism, being on the move for hundreds, thousands of years defines their identity. I have visited Mongols wandering with their yurts across steppes, Nomads on the verge of the Sahara or the Rajasthan desert Thar , Bedouins in the Middle East, indigenous inhabitants of Australia or Papua New Guinea. I am keen on the philosophy of people being always in motion. That is a primitive archaic intuition. It is expressed both by the  Aborigines ritually striding along  The Paths of Singing and dancing Dervishes.
In my real journeys I have realised many actions and performances illustrating a wandering human, touching the issue of a collision of two rudimentary ways of existence: being a wandering human and the one leading a sedentary way of life.
The installations which I realise inside are generally a compensation for the time when I cannot travel in reality . I actually need both these activities: self-realisation in galleries and open spaces of the world.
Nietzsche called this ailment Fernenleben.