Andrzej Pawłowski, Genesis I-15, 1967. Photo: press materials
The "Genesis" series, originally titled "Hands", was created in 1967. A decade later, the artist utilised the "Book of Genesis" for interpretational purposes, hence the thirty images which reflect thirty verses drawn from the book and translated by Artur Sandauer
This series is the third exhibition of Pawłowski's works after "With light written" (2010) and "Recorded in Space" (2011) exhibitions which chronicles and explores his artistic workshop organised by Poznań's Gallery.
In this way, the artist had created a combination of words and images which bore fruit to a poem about creationism and the biblical cosmology. In his works, Andrzej Pawłowski photographed hands with a film camera equipped with a wide angle lens which provided pictures with additional depth and cased the perspective to distort. Thanks to those applied effects, the imagery of hands with the backdrop of a partly cloudy sky became dynamic and expressive. Hands raised towards the heavens on one side bring about the imagery of creation and on the other; they become the extension of the artist's body, or the body of the viewer. In black and white photography the tensions were accentuated and modeled mainly with the use of light and shadows. Hands, the leitmotif of "Genesis", also appear in a form of pulsating images in Pawłowski's film "There and here" (1958) and as finger prints left on photographic paper in the series of photograms from 1962, titled "Apparitions".
The "Genesis" series found was received positively by fans traditional and modern art. Mieczysław Porębski described it as
as grand as the opening by the all-encompassing metaphor. When observed from up close, frighteningly close, not with the eye, but with the ruthless in its sharpness and distortion sight of a camera – hands and the distant sky brought to life by fleeting clouds are plentiful; enough to propel the immense landscape of creation of life, space and light.
Andrzej Pawłowski (1925 – 1986) graduated in 1950 with a degree in Interior Architecture from Krakow's Fine Arts Academy. At the beginning of 60s, at his school, he started the department of Industrial Forms. His experience in design, based on the studies and editing of theoretical tests conducted by the artist, stood as an integral part of his artistic workshop which spread across sculpture, painting, photography and film.
Pawłowski, who's tightly knit with the Grupa Krakowska art group, continually observed and examined the sensory receptor processes with which the audience experiences works. He was aiming at distorting the process of simple layout of art being the direct reflection of the world in which we exist. He often adopted natural physical process' utilizing various graphs of chain curvatures. In other words he forced to reflection and active participation in reception which provoked the revision of mechanics behind deciphering of works. Simultaneously, he scrutinized the process of creation, referring to for example the naturally shaped form formulated by him at the beginning of the 60s.
The first works created by the artist were a series of sculptures titled "Amphibians" and a series of drawings under the title "Reptiles" (1950 – 1952) followed by "Cinematicforms" (1957) – the effect of experiments with the Epidiascope Theater and creation of photographic images directly on light sensitive material for which the artist received an award at a festival in Brussels in 1958. He continued his exploration of issues originated in "Cinematicforms" in the "There and here"(1958) film. In the following years he's created few different photographic projects ("Luxograms", "Heliograms", Mutations/Luxographs", "Hands" later on renamed to "Genesis", "Discovery") paintings ("Naturally Shaped Forms", Naturally Shaped Surfaces") and sculptures ("Mannequins", "Sarcophagi").
In 1963 Pawłowski took up artistic projects with painting and utilization of space. He conducted visual happenings, mobile light works and created photograms. He designed for industry, arranged temporary and permanent exhibitions at places such as The National Museum and the History Museum in Cracow, worked with theater where he experimented with some puppeteering and also tried his talent as an actor (playing the uncle in "Mątwie" by Witkacy in the Cricot Theater).
The exbhition runs between the 20th of January and runs through the 29th of February 2012
Galeria Piekary
ul. Piekary 5
Poznań
www.galeria-piekary.com.pl
Source: press release