Zdzisława Beksińskiego, self-portrait, ca. 1950s. Source: Galeria 2piR
The exhibition draws its theme from the 2011 album Foto Beksinski of over 150 pictures. These images convey a direct and simple messqge, with little emotional inference. The exhibition also features critically acclaimed works created in cooperation with Bronisław Schlabs and Jerzy Lewczyński. Within the informal group that they formed, Beksinski's works were considered to be the most innovative: reminiscent of interwar Surrealism, he used amateur photographs and destroyed negatives to create abstract images. He also authored an untitled series of a proto-Conceptualist and Expressionist nature, anticipating artistic trends such as photo-performance and body-art.
Although he was best known for his apocalyptic paintings, Zdzisław Beksiński (1929-2005) first explored his passion for the synthetic and the unnatural through photography. His pictures transpired an inclination for form and order. In 1950s Poland, when his interest in the art of photography was at its peak, he formulated his own theory of the Alphabet. In an article "On the photographic crisis and how to overcome it" (Fotografia, issue 11, November 1958) he wrote:
Given that every photograph is contaminated with naturalism and does not tell us anything more about the world than what we can deduce from its exterior appearance, then these photographs ought to be consider as a basis for the human to interpret reality – similar to a letter in the Alphabet. This allows the artist to play with the letters and create entire words, sentences , series. These are the lines along which I see the development of photography. A series would resemble the sequence of a film and individual photos would be linked to one another in the same way that a film is edited. The difference between the photographic series and a film would be its consistent duration in time and the synchoronised manner in which the elements impact each other. The juxtaposition of the elements may increase their expressiveness, lead them to convey a different, a broader or a deeper message.
A year after this article had been published Beksinski abandoned photography because of the restrictions its limited parameters set on his imagination. He would return to photography much later, only once photos could be enhanced with computer technology. The curator of the exhibition Monika Piotrowska, notices however how foreboding his ideas on the Alphabet and the development of photography were given the current popularity of photo essays and different kinds of presentations (exhibitions, multimedia shows, slideshows) which all operate on the basis of series of photographs.
The exhibition has been made possible by the Historical Museum of Sanok. It opens on the 4th of April 2012 at 6pm and runs until the 7th of May 2012.
Most of the artist's work is premanently displayed at the Historical Museum in his home town of Sanok, which will additionally be opening a new space on April 28th - the Zdzisław Beksiński Gallery.
Galeria 2piR
Wyższa Szkoła Nauk Humanistycznych i Dziennikarstwa
ul. gen. T. Kutrzeby 10, Poznań
Editor: Marta Jazowska
Source: Galeria 2piR