...Jacek Rykała's painting is a deliberate
creation of myth. It comes from three fundamental sources,
namely his nostalgic seeking for the image of the birthplace,
and his fascination with literature that is close to life,
as he calls it, in particular with the novels by Marek Nowakowski
and Bohumil Hrabal. The formation of Rykała's esthetical imagination
was influenced also by his mother's postcard collection which
included reproductions both of great and of kitschy art...
Maria Fiderkiewicz, Mythical Adventure with the Memory
...Painting the recesses of Sosnowiec, and forcibly stressing
their characteristic details, Jacek Rykała is painting 'the
entire world'. He shows it in a modest, but at the same
time generous way. And between the lines of his pictorial
message he encourages certain philosophical melancholy.
As if the famous river of Heraclitus, into which we cannot
step twice, would spill out of the picture through light
or dark slits and gaps of those gates, fences, doors, dark
corridors, and the windows that have been left ajar. On
the stipulation that the reality and time in his picture
have come to a standstill, becoming immobilised, and immortal.
All this can be called 'Jacek Rykała's painting'. However,
to say 'painting' is decidedly too little. Because in this
case, even though everything comes from painting or painting-photographic
or even painting-carpentry-glassmaking-scavenging or any
other origin, we are only at the beginning of a longer mental
adventure. The longitude, the depth and the durability of
traces left by this adventure in our memory are not only
art experiencing; it's something more. Art is worth of speaking
and believing unless it is only an empty rhetoric and the
beauty in itself. And this is the case of this artist...
Henryk Waniek, Jacek Rykała in the Orbit of the Truth
...The is no singing in the painting of this fifty-year
old artist, who lectures at the Academy of Fine Arts in
Katowice, having presented over fifty one-artist exhibitions
in Poland and abroad. His sad poetry is characterised by
a slow and serious rhythm of sombre songs, interrupted only
sometimes by some separate and violent explosions of colour,
which are as if a cry of hope.
His intensive and melancholic works, often divided in small
lyrical pictures as if in a polyptych, change sometimes
into sculptures. Many a time painting gives way to battery
in his art: glass, split wood that resemble some works by
Alberto Buria, old hooks which protected the modest belongings
of old workers' houses, and other antiques found at flea
markets. Rykała's creation tells the story of his nation
by means of symbols. The artist makes it using old gateways
and ruined staircases, carefully tracing the sad poetry
of the tufts of grass, protruding from the stone sett paving.
A table, covered with faded material instead of a tablecloth,
is unusually expressive and deeply moving. At the table,
instead of the revellers, there are eleven works completely
deprived of decorative elements. Each of them is based on
an old photograph, mastered later, as in the example of
the group of children in a wooden frame sewn with tens of
metal nails. In the middle of the table there is a lonely
porcelain vessel filled with sugar, the symbol of 'luxury'
in times of poverty and renouncement...
Edoardo Sassi, "Corriere della Sera", March
2000.
(translated by Elżbieta Jogałła)
...In his whole creation, the artist uses particular objects
included in his pictures and collages. It's rather about
the remnants of objects, which are doomed to oblivion, without
existence and utility, condemned to destruction, decay and
death. Pieces of planks, grey with rains, fragments of windows,
doors, window vents, with traces of old paint, with a forgotten
hook that is closing nothing, with a hinge that carries
nothing, door plates, number plates of the houses that don't
exist yet, with names of the streets that don't exist -
all this inconspicuous garbage, those unimportant traces
of one's life - create the most literal, the most material
layer of Rykała's pictures. Though, not only the very materiality
can be read from them; entire areas of experiences? associations?
traces? of human past presence, touches, glances and feelings
that have passed by are inscribed in them. These experiences,
associations and traces are, however, present in them as
if underground, in the background, as if guessed by the
viewer, who is slowly drawn into the world of such experiences.
What is clearly visible at first sight, it's the texture
of the material, its rough severity, concreteness, simplicity
and everydayness of the objects.
Rykała's photographs exist in close symbiotic relationship
with that material world, with all those things used, immersed
in time and passing-by, fragmentary and banal. These pictures
- mostly official as wallet photographs, stiff, solemn and
unnatural - show people about whom we know nothing. In spite
of this concreteness, they are unreal, like ghosts. We can
trace the efforts made by the artist with them, but it's
not important. The knowledge about how he gets it is a purely
technical knowledge about his skills and techniques. They
are perfectly mastered by the author, but their role is
to serve in much more important things. When in higher and
higher tension we stare at those unclear faces, silhouettes,
and the outlines of figures, which look as if running away
into the depths of the time or as if emerging from the profound
abyss of the time thanks to the magic incantations of the
artist, we are not interested in their distant, closed and
past lots. We are interested in those truths about duration
and passing by, and about indispensable vanishing and possible
returns, which we try to read from them.
Magdalena Hniedziewicz, The Returning Time, "Format"
...All readings and interpretations which are based on external
points of reference such as sociology, history, contemporary
trends in the arts, etc. have to perforce restrict and deform
what's the most precious and important, what I call here
the 'poetics of loss'.
Among intense sensations that we can have when we are looking
at these pictures, are the feelings of deprivation, abandon,
emptiness and absence. The exfoliating reality and its unsettling
yellow light reveal the passing by. Each of us can see it
at first sight. It's obvious. The same is with all the signals
sent by those encrusted details, the scraps of the concrete
and actual reality: photographs, door handles, numbers,
etc. "Hey you, the passer-by - the artist seems to
speak to us - come with me", for it's just the way
for those who will never find the loss.
For the author of these words - Jacek Rykała's creation
is first of all the metaphor of melancholy...
Maciej M. Szczawiński, Mitsou. The Metaphor of Melancholy,
March 1999.
...Quite consciously Rykała cares for certain 'literary
quality' of his art, openly admitting to his admiration
for Ibsen, Chekhov, Hrabal and Schulz. Especially the sprit
of that latter roams somewhere amongst the cobblestones,
honeyed mirrors of puddles and the dense brushwood, tightly
covering the past time in this artist's pictures. Empty,
I mean deserted, fragments of the space that we could tame
so easily in our childhood, are the sad message about the
fact that we haven't been there for long, and that the life
is somewhere else. In cubby-holes of our imagination and
in clefts of our memory we still preserve the 'postcards'
of places, but we lack the courage to populate them. The
danger of losing the smell and taste of past situations
is as real as in telling the dreams. To introduce the plot
into the pictures would by risky or even doomed to failure
and banality. Rykała is, however, a master of resignation;
he settles for some economical but meaningful description.
Ola Wojtkiewicz, Smell of the Light, "Opcje"
...Jacek Rykała brings the micro-cosmos of Silesia closer
to us, as if using a magnifying glass. From pieces of landscape,
crushed by the time, he recalls the memory of this land's
lots, of the difficult life of its citizens, and of the
gravity of the modest and at the same time rich urban culture
which is unlike the usually dumb culture of great conurbations.
With reserved passion Rykała looks for poetry in traces
of human existence, observing old gateways, worn smooth
stairs and banisters, damp patches on the walls, and the
tussocks of grass, which are protruding from among ancient
cobblestones. He confronts these mementoes with brutal requisites
of everyday humdrum, and with melancholic recordings of
the past in old photographs.
In his expressive painting Jacek Rykała evokes the magic
of the land or rather of that urban Moloch that hides the
multitude of human lots...
Tadeusz Konwicki, Sielec Quarter Prompts. Introduction
to the catalogue, 1995
...Jacek Rykała's attitude, typical for the observer of
the reality, who traces human life in its episodic threads
that are following or parallel to each other, reminds me
of Bauman's model of the 'Stroller'. In his wanderings,
however, Rykała the Stroller meets instead of people rather
their shadows, where objects and places are the only material
equivalents of their presence. Personified insignificant
objects (like flat numbers, street boards, door handles,
hooks, pieces of windows and doors) are like fragments of
living organism, like the memory of eyes, feet and hands
which touched them not so long ago.
Rykała the Stroller proposes something that recalls Jean
Baudrillard's term, namely the state of being 'more real
than the reality'...
Izabella Gustowska, Sielec Quarter Prompts
In the autumn 1977 I've got my first one-artist exhibition
at the then very prestigious Katowice Gallery of the Union
of Polish Artists and Designers, where Igor Neugebauer,
its chief and a painter, used to present the most interesting
artists from the whole Poland. I was very proud and satisfied,
receiving the invitation from him only one year after my
graduation. My exhibition was the sixtieth exposition at
that gallery and I was lucky that the catalogue, of course
black-and-white, was printed not as usual on poor-quality
paper, but on chalk-coated paper which was left after the
sixtieth anniversary of October Revolution. A few years
later the BWA Contemporary Art Gallery in Katowice published
my first full-colour catalogue, in the introduction to which
Professor Andrzej Pietsch wrote,
"...So, is it a paradise lost here? Can these documents
of destruction, decay and decline - painted sometimes with
a fierce bluntness - speak about the paradise? Those once
useful objects, the remnants of which are the material of
Rykała's pictures, have always been mean, poor and far from
paradisiacal splendours. And may be it's a journalistic
critic of the relics of the precedent era? Do these figures
- quartered with the planks of benches, cut with old window
frames or lost in cluttered courtyards - dream about moving
to a flat with bathroom in an apartment block or about holding
out their term on their old stamping ground?"
I still don't know it, even though so many years passed...
Jacek Rykała
THE CONCENTRATION ACHIEVED THANKS TO SOMETHING CONCRETE
Roman Lewandowski interviews Jacek Rykała
Where are your artistic passions coming from? What
did make you choose the so rare profession? And why it's
just painting?
There were some decisive circumstances. Family factors
were among the most important determinants. My mother was
a talented woman; she even wanted to study at the Academy.
Before my birth she attended a two-year preparatory course.
The fact that there were plenty of odd things at home was
also important; I liked to watch the very much. My mother
started to collect reproductions of pictures as early as
before the war, when she was a girl. It was a curious collection
that consisted of small reproductions attached to packets
of cigarettes. Mostly they were great painters, but some
kitschy pictures happened, too. As a child I saw many albums
at home and I watched my mother, who used to paint pictures
in her spare time. On the other hand, I have never liked
school and in general all the situations in which someone
decided for me were getting on my nerves. Setting out on
my studies at the Academy, I had no idea that painting would
become my profession. However later, when just after my
graduation my pictures started to win prizes and my painting
became appreciated, it was much easier to enter the profession.
But even then nothing was really settled yet, since I was
also interested in film directing and literature. I read
a huge number of books. And it happened what was to happen...
It isn't probably an isolate case that regular artistic
groups have appeared in Silesia. The artists join together
because of the similar attitudes they accept or only because
they live in the same region. Such communities of interests
have never characterised your artistic activity. Where did
such an attitude come from in you? Is it a kind of contesting
the place, the time and the people, or are there other factors,
personal, biographical or others that are decisive in this
context?
I think that existential thinking about man is fundamental.
Moreover, I should add that in a sense I was led in my life,
even though I don't know who was the leader. This may sound
mystical, but it's true that my life has taken such course.
At the end of my studies I had a studio in the attic of
an old house in Katowice. Apart from my studio there were
three apartments in the house, occupied by three elderly
women. Each of them was different. And I had good relations
with all of them. I used to help one of them, doing the
shopping... It was a kind of vivisection; today I wouldn't
have the courage to do something like that. As Miłosz, a
famous Polish poet beautifully said, "The older you
are, the more you sympathize with others, but also with
you." And it happened so. Now, when I'm looking back,
they were, so to ugly speak, my raw material. In a way it's
understandable, for in my life I read a number of books
and my sensibility is as constructed as to notice certain
signs of existence of the time that is passing by... It
was strange even for me; being only in my twenties, I shouldn't
see it, but I did. And quite quickly I realised that it
was connected with the chosen way of artistic life. I could
see things that usually were out of place or resulting not
from human structure. And then something strange can happen.
This was just my case. Speaking more vividly... For example,
passing gateways, I felt they were transcendent passageways
for me. Today it may sound silly, but at the time I could
see me as if thirty years later. I knew that whatever happened,
it was only a fraction of a second. I felt it really intensely,
but at the same time - what's very important - it didn't
depress me. People usually become depressed in such circumstances.
With me it was otherwise... I think it was like that because
I found fulfilment in art. A new value appeared to me, and
I followed it. It was the aesthetics and the area of which
I was a part - as if I were someone completely new.
You surely know Hrabal's book What a Beautiful Mourning...
Yes, of course. I even painted the picture entitled just
like that, turning my thoughts to Hrabal. It is the remarkably
beautiful prose concerning just those very important issues.
Coming back to his childhood, Hrabal created a myth. And
even if it's not clear what's real and what's fictitious,
the very intenseness of that world and the importance of
its matter move us, because they are concerning the most
important things for us.
And what was the decisive factor influencing the
issues of the presented world of your works? For, the enclaves
of High Silesia do appear in them...
It's rather the coal basin of Zagłębie...
You are right, further details are needed. Is it
your need of identification and inscribing in this place
or rather your pictures are the effect of painting contemplation
of the world in general?
Here I have to say that there is a difference between Silesian
architecture and that of Zagłębie. For example houses in
Sosnowiec and Katowice have a bit different character. Rich
tenements in Sosnowiec were built by the same architects
as in Łódź. Instead in Katowice they were Germans as a rule.
Sosnowiec tenements are looking as if they were lighter,
and constructed without the use of clinker. Nonetheless
I'm interested rather in the areas of workers' settlements,
with houses not higher than two storeys and often not plastered,
because of the lack of money. They are accompanied by sandstone
which is excavated from the ground on which the house is
standing. This is the poverty, the thing that characterizes
the place. This moves me a lot. Besides, in Sosnowiec Jews
were one third of the population, and in Będzin at least
a half of its citizens were Jews. Someone said they built
houses as if they were to escape from them in a while. So,
their buildings were not particularly solid, while in Katowice
buildings were constructed for ages. In Katowice people
believed in the future, in Sosnowiec it was otherwise. Various
people lived there: Jews and those who returned from the
Siberian exile (hence the name of Syberka, a quarter of
Będzin), as well as communists and some cutpurses... This
mixture gave a very strange image of the place. For me it
is exceptionally important. I feel emotionally committed
in that place and this feeling doesn't result only from
my local patriotism. It's something metaphysical. When for
example I see those old houses overgrown with burdock, I
feel intuitively certain odd bond with the place, which
I even cannot name. In any case I have felt greatly inspired
for past thirty years in connection with the situations
sketched here. Many a time I could walk in the same street,
where - it seemed - nothing new could happen, but each time
I found something that was a discovery for me. Because of
the type of sensibility I've had and because of my readings
and other fascinations with film and other arts, I have
never been bored with that town...
And just this is very interesting that certain type
of limitation or the making do with one thing can create
or indicate the wholeness. Like in Borges, who in his early
literary narrations described the cultural melting pot of
Buenos Aires as the world in a pill...
It's just so... I am convinced about it, having spoken
with a huge number of people many a time. However in the
beginning it was - to be fair - certain problem for me...
I was afraid that I was confined in my own world. But, fortunately,
it wasn't so. The reception of my works was completely unforeseeable,
and the talks unrepeatable in various parts of the world.
And when I learned that in the Zapiecek gallery a young
Afro-American is to buy my picture entitled An Army-mate,
in which I painted a gate in Będzin, I got the best confirmation.
When I give something very personal, for example a picture
in which I include everything that happens between painting
and the ready work, the viewer is indispensable. And the
positive feedback starts to appear then; this experience
is amazingly cool. There have been plenty of such emotional
situations in my life... In fact, it was a driving force
for me, because I was convinced that I wasn't autistic in
art, and not giving a hoot. On the contrary, art was building
something that would receive a warm reception... Especially
as it happened many a time that a viewer visited me and
started to tell the story of his life.
Besides this inclination to life in its pure shape,
are you inspired by contemporary painting? For, such reverential
treating of details and all that ornamentation with light,
which take place in you, can remind rather the art of great
Dutchmen...
Of course, you are right... With age we all experience
various fascinations. And they change. But, you know, it
was much later that I was mature enough for the Dutchmen.
In the nineties?
Yeah. At the beginning of the nineties I had an exhibition
in Amsterdam. Taking the opportunity - visiting various
museums - I got to know their painting only then. I saw
and discovered it anew; it was a deep experience. Earlier
it was my fascination with American pop-art, which was very
close to me. Apart from this the activity of the Wprost
['Directly'] group was important for me. I was also contesting
our political reality, and they impressed me a lot with
their courage. Apart from all this, Francis Bacon was exceptionally
important for me.
In the middle of the eighties you started to introduce
new element to your pictures and objects, I mean photographs.
Are they the pictures of your close friends and family or
they appeared in you accidentally, and it was later that
you created new biographies for them...?
This question is very important. Before all this happened,
there had been an event which started the practice. As you
know, I firstly painted landscapes without human figures
and without their photographic likenesses, but with time
I was lacking something. I knew I hadn't to paint them,
because it was alien something to me. I was looking for
my own solution. And then by pure chance I found something.
Visiting old houses that were to be knocked down, where
I was looking for the elements I could use in my pictures,
I found a photograph of a family from the twenties or the
thirties. It hangs pinned still in my studio. It's the perfectly
taken picture, and in excellent state. It presents a father,
a mother, a boy and a girl. And then I understood that I
should do something as if to 'save' the man in a symbolic
way. I wanted to depict everything in one moment, I mean
all the passing by, shown as if someone falling down a chasm
stopped on a protruding rock. I wanted to use it, however
at the same time I was conscious that with its introduction
into the picture a new relation can appear, which will provoke
the viewer to create new receptions and new interpretations.
I cared much about it. I think the more interpretations
we have, the better is the situation. And thus it began...
Looking for pictures, I've rummaged firstly through my house,
then my mother's and later also the strangers'. I started
to create new stories, adding titles with names of some
individuals known to me or strangers, but always with a
new biography and a new story, drawn from the little photograph.
Therefore we can say that you are, although in another
dimension, also a portraitist...
Once, somewhere in the mid-eighties a funny thing happened
to me. I got an order to paint the portrait of one from
among the professors of the Jagiellonian University... I
was surprised, for everybody knew me from my paintings of
courtyards. So I asked Prof. Waltoś how it could happen.
He answered that watching my exhibition in the company of
Prof. Madeyski, they concluded that I should paint excellent
portraits. So I painted two portraits: the then aged Professor
Wereszycki, and later Professor Grzybowski, because at the
Academy in Cracow there has been a tradition of portrait
gallery. One artist could paint not more than two portraits.
That first picture received a warm reception and was often
discussed. But why am I speaking about it now? It's because
I have a very concrete approach to human figures. This probably
resulted from the fact that I graduated from the faculty
of printmaking, and not painting. Thus concrete things remained
in me. Painting benches I tried to get well defined figures.
And later, when I started to paint landscapes, I couldn't
imagine that I might interfere in them with so concretely
painted figure, because this would cause the rivalry of
motives. The kind of concentration I can achieve thanks
to something concrete makes me choose photography instead
of painting figures.
The requisites you add to your works are the other
traces of presence. They are, for example, enamel plates,
keys...
They are also very important. They are to stimulate imagination
and emotions. When someone sees something concrete, he would
like to touch it, feel it in more sensual manner, palpably,
and even play with that element... I have seen it many times.
Nevertheless it is an aggressive reality, of course not
in the context of what we meet today in art that is sometimes
very drastic; it's another kind of aggressiveness. It's
the aggressiveness which doesn't allow us to sit quietly
by something concrete. This concreteness and the context
of the picture can make a work attract our eyes, stimulating
our projection and thinking. And then new commentaries and
new receptions appear again; it's very important for me.
