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15/5/2008

Ignacy Czwartos

Leto Gallery, Warsaw

For many years the alphabet of signs, gestures and notions of Ignacy Czwartos has consequently been taking on the same form. Colour-reduced abstractions painted with a neutral palette, are sometimes combined with figurative representation referring to Baroque “parade portraits”. This kind of blend of recognizable and abstract shapes creates a specific atmosphere making the viewer function between the visible, familiar world and the one that cannot be described so easily. Paintings of Czwartos, balancing at the crossroads of the two worlds, are often compared to the metaphysical tradition started by Kazimierz Malewicz. Formal reality transformed into the language of shapes and planes makes use of the same silence and sublime persistence, which proves the artist’s unusual ability to reach harmony in painting. “Abstraction of Czwartos is pure in its genre. (...) The painter synthesises formal discipline and some mysterious form of painting emotionality. This difficult kind of synthesis has worked in this case.” – Jerzy Nowosielski wrote. This space for the author’s works stays constant, iconic. It is an artistic designate, a characteristic of an idea of encoding reality, geometrical forms of which define the composition in terms of immutable structure.
The exhibition „Kielce, Kielce Korona”, on the one hand, continues the previous stylistics of “provincial abstraction” as described by Czwartos himself. On the other hand, it questions this neutral repertoire and introduces a tone of familiarity and intimacy as the author’s friendship and the interest in football became the pretext to make the paintings. Czwartos was born in Kielce, his family house was located near the “Korona” stadium. As a boy he used to visit places where the famous team of “Golden-Bloody” (the name refers to the team’s colours: yellow and red) gained their strong position and until today has been a remarkable point on the football map of southern Poland. It is said that childhood passions influence one’s life choices. In the case of Czwartos the past has returned in a new series of paintings, subtly referring to sports emblems and colours. Some viewers compare these static compositions representing the author himself to old portraits of Sarmats (in Baroque representatives of Polish nobility), due to their gravity and distance. Others see in them references to medieval representations of founders. The symbol of characteristic frozen gestures of palms introduces a mystery, a sign from the past, hard to decipher and accessible to few only.

One of the paintings depicts Jacek Kasjanowicz, a painter, an old college friend, connected with the Cracovian artistic circle. Both the matter of provenience and Kasjanowicz’s passion for sport were made present through football connotations – red and white stripes are recognized as a sign of the “Cracovia” football club. What is essential in this case, and maybe not so clear to those who don’t share the football passion, this friendly relationship refers as well to the clubs. This juxtaposition makes me think that the myth of a noble “Sarmat” suddenly has gained the colours of a contemporary football fan.

Czwartos keeps following his rhythm, combining abstraction with figuration. Even if a new detail appears, this enlivening element doesn’t ruin the composition at all. A typical sign of this painting is a range of soft greys and whites, shaded olive greens, browns and blues. The use of such an unsaturated palette allows the painter to gain the effect of concentration. Concentration is possible thanks to colours that don’t distract the viewer. Their tranquille geometry has an additional harmonising impact.

Most works are the result of getting images in the frames, also the ones kept in memory, where just a fragment of a reality is preserved. Thus, one doesn’t concentrate on what is on the canvas but looks beyond the picture’s borders as if there is a foreground to all that. Krystyna Czerni compared these abstractions to a still, a fragment, a trailer telling of something more to come: “The forms provoke an attempt to “read” or, at least, organize the space, measure the distance. (...) These small canvases optically ‘conquer the space’, spread as if beyond the canvas. We look at them with curiosity like through a keyhole, the door ajar for a moment. They tell the invisible story but the one that certainly waits for us round the corner.” Obviously it not a classical mimesis that is a starting point for the artist but rather some simplified painting language of signs that cross, overlap and enhance each other, creating a specific structure. This painting imitates space, yet it does so through abstract references which aren’t externally related to things but are an unclear, subtle signal of affinity.

In one of the interviews Czwartos said: “My painting makes one look and calm down. To me the process of painting means self-development”. It seems that from the established code of raw stylistics suddenly a slightly different, a bit intimate picture emerges, related to one’s memories and close relationships.
Katarzyna Urbańska

Vernissage: May 16, 7.00-9.00 P.M.

Leto Gallery
ul. Hoza 9c - Warsaw
Free admission

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