Exposures

I have accompanied Tomasz Stangrecki’s artistic activities since the mid-1980s. From the time of his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, at the Faculty of Graphics in Katowice, he tried to find his own place in the artistic and political reality, slowly preparing for the fundamental political change in 1989. He was looking for a creative and living space for himself, negating the progressive commercialism in the visual arts, postponing the necessity to opt for one of the convenient political options. He devoted himself to art, although in fact he lost himself in it. He was still looking. He continued his painting studies at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Nuremberg and Munich. He returned to Poland as an established artist, but still with the baggage of naive faith in art and its social role. Nobody at that time dealt with the intricacies of the newest art and artistic life. There were more important things. In the then emerging consumer society, Tomasz Stangrecki did not fit these brutal and dangerous (for naive artists) mechanisms. However, he made a decision and he is implementing it to this day, that he will be a creator and set off on a lonely path towards artistic and the most important – human self-realization. It was a long road, full of life snares, failures, humiliations, and perhaps even the debasement of a few, but each time he got up from his knees and continued on his way. Strength and faith in art – idealistic and banal as it sounds – is probably the only imperative of every honest artist to help him break the waves and get up from his knees. In each of the disciplines of art in which he spoke (perhaps it would be more legitimate to say – “confessed”, but to whom? – most likely himself) with great talent, he did it honestly towards himself, the viewer and, most importantly, the arts. He told about himself and people like him – pushed out of their comfortable way by life by a malicious fate. He painted, drew, photographed, designed theatrical scenery, made extremely interesting street performances, worked as an assistant stage designer in opera, on film sets, was a producer and (with success!) a film actor. He created – for life and against it. I do not remember when the chamber sculptures by Tomasz Stangrecki began to be created, but from those first attempts I knew that he had found a material and a way of shaping it that would allow him to fulfill his creative story. He entered the alchemical world, inaccessible to us, mysterious, hidden in the studio, plunged into solitude. There he performed the most important transmutation that the masters of alchemy had always dreamed of; he managed to melt his painful experiences into golden and silver forms that amaze many today. Another chapter began with the exhibition of these intimate objects in 2005 at the Upper Silesian Museum in Bytom. Today, at the exhibition by Tomasz Stangrecki at the Sheraton Sopot Hotel, we can see the effects of these alchemical experiences; sculptural objects, bas-reliefs, reliefs, autonomous forms, made only in one, unique copy. Predatory, rebellious, aggressive, blunt forms, unbearable to the viewer and their future user, like most jewelery trifles, without any brilliance and polished shape. The forms of Tomasz Stangrecki take, or actually kidnap the viewer on a journey to the beginnings of time and human beings of that time, the records preserved on the walls of caves, weathered rocks, stone blocks of temples crumbling in deserts, hidden in the backwoods of tropical forests, discovered in lonely burial mounds, found in grave pits , archaeological exhibition showcases. The silver forms of Tomasz Stangrecki materialize archetypal stories about the world, created by the first artists who struggle to understand the complexity of the world given to them and try to describe this world, but most of all to invoke their fear, helplessness and unbearable loneliness. Like those first discoverers of secret meanings, Tomasz Stangrecki tries to harness the light of stars and planets, because this light brings forms to life, etches letters from undeciphered ancient alphabets, scraps of magic signs and formulas, gives amulets a new power, evokes horned but tamed already demons, idols and saints for those who want to believe, resembles the silhouettes of throwing arrows and spears, fighting, hunting, loving, praying, fishing for sea creatures, releasing desert mirages. Each of these works is one story, a reminder of old civilizations, lost empires and individual human stories, hopes and dreams. Unique works, only in one, unique copy – just like each of us.