Lines and Scaffoldings
2009’s To Read Between The Lines is a series of twelve paintings depicting lines framed in various ways: diagonally, up-down, down-up, from the side, in close-up and in far-away perspective. The use of such varied shots makes it seem as if we are observing them from all the angles, which gives the feeling of being limited and enclosed in a cage. These lines depict supermarket fences – the characteristic bends are indicative of this. The accumulation of rust-covered bars shows an abstract combination of lines forming into optical illusions and having an impact similar to those of op-art experiments (Line 1 and Line 2). Some of them seem to echo Mondrian’s neoplasticism methods (Line 3, Line 5 and Line 12). The Dutch painter believed that a battle fought between contrasts lies in opposition to vertical and horizontal lines: that of spirit and matter, masculinity and femininity, positivity and negativity. This battle influences the world’s progress. Ciężki consciously uses Mondrian’s two basic lines: vertical and horizontal, and also two non-colours: white and grey. While Mondrian’s neoplastic aesthetic was inseparably connected with the views of the mystic M.H.J. Schoenmarker, Ciężki’s lines are devoid of theosophical character. By intersecting horizontally and vertically, they are ultimately just attributes of an ordinary fence.
The artist created a series of three Scaffolding canvases (2010) in a similar spirit. The painting, depicting scaffoldings, used for painting big wall surfaces and erecting constructions, was painted with photorealistic accuracy. In a way characteristic of the artist, these objects were abstracted from their actual environment and deprived of their functional character. They turn out to be an aesthetic object in their own right, and their colour scheme resembles Ciężki’s first works. These geometrical structures of rusted rails against a dark blue background are covered in fragments of white paints, which were meticulously imitated by the artist, as if he was a painter inside his own painting. Ciężki won the main prize in the Bielska Jesień competition, which allowed him to create his own exhibition concept titled Blackout in Bielska Gallery BWA.
Blackout
The Blackout series consists of darkened, monochrome images devoid of colour, normally crucial to Ciężki's work. Some paintings from the series depict black paintings wrapped in black packaging. The imprinting packages with concave lines bring Lucio Fontana’s experiments of cutting canvases to mind. In turn in other paintings appear black shiny lines on black background, showing in a subtle way darkened wood constructions in various shots which embrace abstract forms in a way characteristic of Ciężki. They resemble a series of black canvases painted by Rafał Bujnowski since 2007, breaking the conventional flatness of painting. The inspiration from Kraków-based artist’s monochrome paintings seems well visible in Blackout. They are, however, apparent only in the practice of using black colour. In Ciężki’s series, the strategy of combining the structures of particular items and spheres of abstraction characteristic of the painter is in the foreground.
Corporal Punishments
Ciężki systematically and deliberately develops the practice of manipulating our field of view and combines it with the actual perception of given snippets of reality. In the Corporal Punishments series (2015-2016), he transfers us to a school – an institution which shapes personality. It is precisely the school system of prizes and punishments that sets up the essential rules of an individual’s life in society. The artist uses a title which brings to mind the school’s oppressive character. In the paintings, we can see the visualisations of fragments of bathrooms, gym hall parquets and rails. Wood stain used in the Parquet I-VI canvases affects the sense of smell in equal degree. Here the cycle is characterised by multisensory sensations, and the gym hall’s odour brings back memories from PE classes – the most corporal classes in school. In this series, we observe the painting’s world through the eyes of a schoolkid gazing at the floor, staring, probably turning his back on the teacher who punishes for given misdemeanours. Hanging a floor fragment on the wall in the painting is an interesting and unobvious act. As the exhibition viewers, we do not direct our sight downwards, but in front of us, and the parquet seems as another sequence of recognitions of the variants of abstraction characteristic of the artist. In the semantic perspective, it is a series different from Playgrounds, since school games and amusements are not abstracted from reality, but packed into the institutionalised scheme of the system of power imposed on us.
Originally written in Polish by Przemysław Strożek, Nov 2017, translated by Patryk Grabowski, Nov 2017