If we take a closer look at the monochromatic paintings, they do not seem to be a nod to Kazimierz Malewicz's Suprematism movement, but rather invoke the symbolism of the black mirror, as depicted in the British TV series Black Mirror, where it is at the same time the screen of a smartphone, tablet and a computer, reflecting our reality in the virtual reality. Baran's object-paintings, opaque and covered in various colours of the mirror, reflect what we really see and at the same time give us a sensation of being on the other side – or inside – of the painting. This heterotopia, in which the reflected image constitutes the borderline experience, displays the so-called counter-location, an unreal space in which we can see ourselves where we are not. The experience of entering the painting equals the experience of the location without a location, and under this reasoning – virtual reality.
Baran's works' titles, consisting of letters, digits and hashtags (for example #d1d1d1, #6a6c69, #111514), suggest that we should view them as part of pop-culture codes, digital culture and contemporary digital communication. In reality, the numbers are hexadecimal codes from web documents which the artist generates with the use of photo editing software after saving a reproduction of a painting. The number #808080, corresponding with the grey colour in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), was used as the title of Baran's exhibition at Le Guern Gallery in 2015. In this manner, the collection of works exhibited there was simultaneously written into the language of virtual reality and into the language of abstract painting confronted with the properties of ready-mades.
Baran's paintings and installations undoubtedly fire up the viewer's intuition. The artist seems to be trying to evoke emotional engagement and virtual immersion. Natural and artificial light and the shades and refractions play well with the object-paintings and undergo perpetual changes, depending on the view angle and the location from which the work is viewed. Avant-garde artists believed that movement and light ruin the static realism in painting. In Baran's art, movement and light harmonise with the abstract form and become its inseparable components. In this context, the artist also speaks of gradient – a term derived from computer graphics, which consists in fluid tonal transitions between colours.
Much is left to chance in Baran's work. The artist does not presume what the effect of his work will be. They are not polished, refined; they leave the viewer room to add something. They work in their totality, always connected with the specific space. In this sense, a wall in an art gallery is also a space for an interaction with the artwork, as is the case with, for example, the pieces made from splines (untitled, diptych, 2014), or in the case of monochromatic paintings corresponding with the building's architecture, essentially forming one complex (as seen in the Artists from Krakow: The Generation 1980–1990 exhibition in MOCAK, Kraków).
In his works, Baran sometimes calls upon important events from art history, embedding them into the relations between art and anti-art characteristic of him. In an untitled work from 2014, he covered a wooden board for an icon – a noble surface – with golden spray paint, thus attributing his work with an iconoclastic, but also a sacral and metaphysical aspect. In his 2017 works, he took inspiration from the masters of Polish abstract art, Władysław Strzemiński and Henryk Stażewski, and transposed their well-known artworks onto glazed polycarbonate boards.
The work titled Autosan, presented at the same exhibition in the Regional Museum in Stalowa Wola, resembled objects from Frank Stella's well-known series inspired by synagogues in Polish towns. In this case, however, the juxtaposition of colours in Autosan has nothing to do with the Jewish identity of Polish municipalities, but with the arrangement of colours on Polish buses.
Baran calls himself 'the abstract hooligan' for a reason and makes the protagonist of Władysław Reymont's novel titled Tomek Baran his alter ego. His artistic practices seem to be a deceitful game and are infused with an ironical approach to his own creations, treated as a meeting point of art and non-art, painting and non-painting and the surrounding reality and virtual reality. Recently, his art entered the public space, as can be seen with his engagement in the Kiosk project, co-created with Marta Antoniak, Mateusz Kula and Michał Zawada. Together with the Kraków-based artists, he exhibits from time to time in a mobile gallery resembling a kiosk. The real kiosks are currently disappearing from the public space, and the project co-created by Baran displays a certain nostalgia for the 1990s, making one reminisce of these years and the characteristic atmosphere of the political transformation in Poland.
Written in Polish by Przemysław Strożek, Feb 2018, translated by Patryk Grabowski, Apr 2018