The painter's condition

Roman Siwulak first presented his work in 1971, at Galeria Foksal's 1st Anonymous Exhibition [I Wystawa Anonimowa]. The remaining works on display in this mysteriously titled show were created by Andrzej Wełmiński. At the time, both debuting artists attended the State Visual Arts High School [Państwowe Liceum Plastyczne] in Krakow and, fearing the reaction of the teaching staff, they decided to encrypt their public showing, concealing their names. Two years on, and by then students of Krakow's Fine Arts Academy [Akademia Sztuk Pięknych], they pursued a similar course. From the standpoint of today's educational model, these acts of camouflage appear to be something of an absurdity and give rise to the question as to whether there were genuine grounds for the young artists' fears. Setting aside all non-artistic considerations, it must be admitted that their alarm was justified, inasmuch as the marked youthful rebellion of their work might well have had a negative impact on their relationships with their teachers. Without a doubt, what spurred that anonymous group's first artistic attempts was a meeting with Tadeusz Kantor. As a result, both the youngsters became members of the Teatr Cricot 2 acting company. Working on a production within the concepts of 'Impossible Theatre' [Teatr Niemożliwy], they found themselves, at one and the same time, at the very heart of the Kantorian discourse regarding conceptual thinking on the ontological status of works of art. The discussion then raging at the Krzysztofory and Foksal Galleries, a discussion on the meaning underlying the annihilation of traditional art forms, turned Siwulak's thoughts toward cement pictures. In presenting a blind and empty picture at the Warsaw exhibition, a picture misshapen and with one corner slashed away, to boot, the author wished to manifest his deprecation of painting practices thus far. So radical a gesture on the part of so inexperienced a whelp, at the very start of his artistic education, could scarcely count upon a well-disposed reception from conservative scholars. However, for Roman Siwulak, the act of degrading the representational function of paintings and of consigning the surface within the frame to the role of an object and only an object, marked a reference point for the development of his creative quest in subsequent years. For example, he debases the notion of the painting, commanding it to adapt its form to that of objects remaining in their natural positions, such as a ladder leaning up against a wall or stairs. In addition, he disdains the prescribed tradition of aesthetic values by gold-plating the ladder and splattering the stairs with paint.

In 1976, Roman Siwulak and Andrzej Wełmiński held a joint show at the Foksal. Entitled Behind the Cupboard [Za szafą], it consisted of objects which had been torn away from their parent context and set in one foreign to them. As a result of compositions which led to their transition from the natural order of things, from the sphere of commonplace reality to a different order, the individual elements took on a new system of meanings, specific categories of art. The artists resolved to conceal the transmutations of the ordinary, banal elements, to hide them away (e.g. a cupboard, veiling a splashed tar stain, or a doormat, covering a bar of soap concealed beneath it). This treatment forged links with the Schulzian vision, the wonderous world of holes, corners and chimney flues. This thread of secret concealment, of hidey-holes, was also to have ramifications on Siwulak's work in the early part of the 21st century.

In the intervening three decades, art transcended numerous boundaries and the forces of this upheaval swept away every conventional manner of representation. It spread far and wide, razing the hard and fast barriers between form and genre. It destroyed the concept of modernism, which posits that within the process of change, it is possible to determine a single direction for a given time. It created a post-modern world, manifesting itself in a dynamic and infinite complexity.

In his series of pictures completed between 2004-2006 and shown at the Foksal in 2006, Siwulak returned to both the issues at whose surface he had begun to scratch in the 1970s; the picture-as-object and commonplace, hidden reality. He did this after a lengthy passage of time and from the standpoint of a mature and experienced artist, who was consciously manipulating resources developed many years previously, in order to emphasise more forcibly classical, though still relevant, problems concerning the identity of both painter and painting. The frames, knocked up out of old planks of wood, enclosed yawning areas of blank canvas, covered in a neutral mix of cement, plaster, sand, ashes and lime. At the same time, the frames had yielded to an unnatural misshapenness. Strips of wood, cracked and out of true, formed fissures between the frames and the surface of the canvas at sundry points. Into these crannies, the artist crammed untreated sheep's wool, rags, bulrushes, tar, coal, and so forth, as if to hide them. In this cycle of picture-objects, with the common title of Between a painting and... [Pomiędzy obrazem a...], Siwulak tackled the problem of the painter's condition when he has given up on painting, but not on the notion of being a painter. All that then remained to him was the frame, that inseparable attribute of painting, determining the borders of the space reserved for art. What also remained was the pressure of a painting's tradition, compelling that the empty surface be filled. However, the artist had already previously performed the act of degrading the painting as an autonomous work of art. He had already shown it its place amongst other objects. Now he went further. Outwardly, the painting had lost its physical uniqueness, had sunk into its surroundings and the surroundings seemed to have crossed the border of the frame. Paradoxically, though, rather than forming a connection, the mortar-covered canvas, hinting at an organic bond with the plaster-covered wall, emphasised even more powerfully the fact that the bridges between a work and the world around it are illusory. After all, walls stand in order to divide, to screen off and to seal up. Together with the floor and ceiling, they demarcate the cut-off point of a life isolated from external reality. At the same time, walls are man-made and thus a painting-as-object hung on a wall is a thing, set amongst other things. In manipulating his misshapen frames, Siwulak enriched the metaphoric meaning to be read in his works. The matter thrust, as if hidden in shame, into the fissures, emanated primordiality. The artist was more fascinated by the startling contrast of raw materials appearing in such an incongruous place than he was by the language inherent in their symbolism. It was as if the very ordinariness of life, a reality produced by no process, plain and with no pretensions to artistry, had squeezed itself into the painting, causing the frame to distort. Or the reverse; that the frame had been deliberately misshaped, in order to create hiding places within it. With its apparent self-engrossment, Siwulak's art gives the appearance of being anachronistic, but, given the watchword artistic trend toward engaging in current conflicts and expression, where every discourse has now been tamed and superficial topicality harnessed in social and political problems, the work of this Krakovian artist, turning our attention toward the problems of art itself, exude an extraordinary freshness.

In his series of works created between 2006-2009, currently on show at the Foksal and entitled Pomimo obrazu, a fluid, multi-faceted and enigmatic title1, Siwulak's paintings remain consistently empty, but the passivity which characterised his earlier work, the waiting for a gesture, for action, has been fractured, for what we discover in them are the spoor, the after-effects of some kind of action. In one, we see the traces of flight in a cord entangled in pyjamas, in another, the excavation of a hollow, in yet another, the remains of gigantean session of cigarette smoking. The artist's fascination with theatre sings out with significantly greater power than in his earlier cycles of canvasses, for theatre has been an unbroken sphere of his artistic activities, as both an actor and instructor. After an ephemeral theatrical performance, which exists only for its "hour upon the stage", all that remain are the props, costumes and scenery. Of course, nothing can possibly replace the direct contact between the audience and a live actor, but the very objects themselves, the props that were a part of the stage action, contain within themselves the magic of the silent witness, capable only by their existence of evincing the extraordinary nature of the event in which they played their part. In his visual creations, Siwulak's work enters into a similar state. Renouncing any pictorial composition on the canvas, the artist has confronted the empty surface with material vestiges, an object bearing witness to the action that occurred here. In this, there is also an unquestionably theatrical play on appearance and reality, since, after all, the action transpires to be a fiction, despite having left real articles behind.
In these new pictures-as-objects, the artist's dialogue with the past, the history of art, also makes a more forceful appearance. The canvas-wall, marked by action, evokes associations with an early twentieth-century event when, between 1911-1914, the Mona Lisa went missing from the Louvre. At the time, it transpired that the wall, the mark of the theft, was of more significance than the Mona Lisa herself. A contemporary critic noted that the pilgrims who stood in contemplation of that empty space were considerably more numerous than when Leonardo's painting had hung there.
In analogy with his previous works, Siwulak draws upon a repertoire of ordinary, everyday activities. At times, he sets an ironic note, distancing himself from the 'new' curricula of topicality. For instance, in one of the pictures, the strip of wood at the bottom of the frame leans in, supplementing a monstrous ashtray holding an impressive number of cigarette ends, mocking the ignorance of the explorer-apologists of art inextricably bound to life. It is, after all, an almost exact realisation of a phrase from Claes Oldenburg's credo of nearly 40 years' ago, "I am for an art which is smoked like a cigarette, smells like a par of shoes..."2

The art of Roman Siwulak is an unceasing quest for a justification of painting, in which he emphasises the desire and the fear, rather than formulating a ready-made solution. In moving the 'making' of a picture toward the work of the ordinary craftsman, he demonstrates the condition of the contemporary painter, torn between the ritual of craft and the act of devotion. Just as Frank Stella, he understands the concept of being a painter as a declaration of identity, but not so much an identity for oneself as "an identity big enough for everyone to share in."3 He longs to retain the dignity of the artist who is a partner in the discussion on art and not a marionette to be taken out by curators (who know best), in order to illustrate their own fashionable theses and visions, discovering lands which were discovered long ago.

Lech Stangret

1 For a further discussion of the exhibition title, please see Roman Siwulak's own reflections.
2 Catalogue Claes Oldenburg, Städliche Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 1970, quoted in: Piotr Krakowski O sztuce nowej i najnowszej, [On art; the new and the newest] PWN, Warszawa 1984, pg. 22
3 Quoted in Paweł Polit Rzeczy i słowa Martina Creeda [The things and words of Martin Creed] in the catalogue: Martin Creed, cały świat + praca = cały świat [Martin Creed, the whole world + the work = the whole world], CSW Zamek Ujazdowski 2004, pg. 11