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"Drawings and Paintings" Recent work by Marion Kryczka
Fine Arts Building Gallery
The Roman writer, Seneca, said "Vita brevis, ars longa," and Saint Augustine added that the world was created not in time, but with time -- this world has a shelflife. Both urged men to make the most of life -- for even though the race ends it should be well run. And Spinoza in the Seventeenth century observed that God is in the details. "Paintings and Drawings," new works by Marion Kryczka, on view at the Fine Arts Building Gallery from May 5, 1999 through May 29, 1999, encompass all these reflections in Kryczka's very distinctive manner. Each painting and pastel evokes enduring themes, and does this without academic rationalizations or overt manifestos. Kryczka's work is born in experience and response and for this elicits strong impressions in the viewer. They are works to which one returns again and again. "Paintings and Drawings" is a well-organized exhibition; one in which each work, while complete in itself, is placed to build a context with its companions and comprehensively reveal the artist's personality. "Still Life with Model of a Bull" (36"x24") hangs at the very entrance to the show and it forms an excellent prologue to the collection. The juxtaposition of the model of a bull placed together with a meat grinder and butchers serrated cleaver stands as a premonition that life is subject to violence and terminal. Kryczka has observed that "Objects, once arranged, are no longer that same. They take on a new significance." This carries his work well above any simple 'realism' and harkens to an approach which Hans Holbein the Younger exploited to great and enduring effect. And Marion Kryczka builds on the use of the "telling detail" and the counterpoint of visual images with an original and wise instinct in building an experience beyond verbalization.
The main series of oil paintings begins with "Self Portrait with Parents Photos (36"x24"). Here one is given a sensibility which is alien, but salutary for an audience, an American audience, so in love with its 'generation gap.' The photos reveal a history, transmitted to the young, which constitutes part of a preparation for life not personally experienced by the receiver. The objects a life leaves behind in its wake reveals much about its course. As with art, the personal exhibits a continuity beyond a single individual. And there is something here, intentionally, in the perspective between fore- and midground which is disturbing. In this showing, Kryczka very skillfully links differences of time with contrasts between the varied grounds of the painting. Again, this is an approach seen in some of Holbein, but one which Kryczka develops into an eloquent language. "Vanitas" (24"x36") exemplifies some of Kryczka's approach -- in the foreground one finds a assemblage of objects, personal and suggestive: a brush, candles, a fishing lure, nail polish, and a human as well as a deer calvarium. Beyond the immediate, in the background, are chiaroscuro paintings after Georges de La Tour. Kryczka exhibits a fine weaving of time and ground; the personal artifacts of mortality, vita brevis, at the fore, but beyond, as if in the back of the mind, ars longa, "art endures." "Dance of Death #2" (24"x30") and "Dance of Death #1" (20"x24") play more explicitly with the theme, for here not only is the viewer presented with personal, even romantic artifacts, but each incorporates an image from Holbein's own "Totentanz" of 1538. Beyond Holbein's images, there is the fact that after so many centuries his art retains its poignancy and impact. The oil on canvas, "Dance of Death #2," displays a dead partridge, perhaps a hunter's trophy, nail polish, a cup and a Holbein print of Death consorting with young beauties. "Dance of Death #1" sports coral beads, magnolias, a Holbein print and a rodent skull. Death is always the hunter, and the hunted allows for no exceptions -- human, beast and objects fall away. Image endures. In at least three of the paintings on exhibit, dice constitute a 'telling detail,' and the introduction of this icon of chance somewhat follows the function of the rota Fortunae (wheel of Fortune) in earlier, more orthodox tradition. In "Still Life with Photo and Drawing" (24"x36") and "Bird, Dice and Historic Photo" (26"x43") the dice are linked with images of American Indians in a now vanishing native dress, as if to suggest that the vagaries of mortal fate might have been otherwise. In the world, as historians note, visual remembrance is often they only thing we have after people and objects have passed. And this, as Kryczka demonstrates, is the realm of the artist. It is the totality of the artist's composition, much more than an enumeration of objects, that takes precedence and strikes the viewer. Kryczka himself has noted: "Hopes, joys, but what it ends in... we know." Objects, although subject to decay, endure as image. And in Kryczka's paintings this feature of image -- to endure and take on a life and new significance of its own -- is subtly underscored in an almost M.C.Escher-esque quality of touch. Far more subtly than Escher, who made a career of overtly exploring the phenomenon, Kryczka makes skillful use of transmorphing a planar image into an implied three-dimensionality. This is particularly effective in such oils as "Still Life with Photo and Drawing" (24"x36"). Here, amid the artifacts -- a hunting knife, dice, a photo of an American Indian -- the figure portrayed in the underlying drawing seems to materialize from among the material overburden. A similar effect is seen in "Allegory of Faith" (24"x30") where, from among a Sunday Missal, a rose and a slain duck and partridge, the visage emerges from the sheet. The paintings in this showing demonstrate that the artist consciously manipulates a seeming realism in the service of transcendent perception. In one of his five pastel and charcoal pieces on view, "Prints, Drawings and Camera" (27"x39"), the objects of the foreground seem to exists in a visual overlay, iconographically, and the artist elicits a visual rhyme between the image of hyenas fighting and two women brawling, these latter a drawing with the painted title "Chispasos" (Sparks). The artist fashions polyphonies of time and image grounds, and often rhymes subject matter. Perhaps one of the reasons that these techniques contribute so much to the quiet power of expression in the works is that they arise so naturally and unobtrusively. The artist throughout his life experience has assimilated the past of art and human histories and, with a impressive talent and lively technique, allows instinct to mould his expression. Kryczka, at the opening of the exhibition, preferred to pass over a point by point explication of specific paintings, and, when questioned by one of the gallery-goers, gave one of the most intelligent responses any creative artist can give: "I see a painting -- who cares what it means -- I like it." The artist is known for his charm and direct wit, but the response is not as cavalier as it might seem. Kryczka tells the anecdote about the congoid native who was asked along on a veldt safari to aid in tracking animals familiar to him from the rain forest. When asked for his impressions, in the tale the guide replies that the creatures are the same as in the dense growth, but on the veldt so many of them are so much smaller. Kryczka is well aware that our accepted spacial perspective is an invention of the Renaissance and not shared by earlier traditions, or other cultures until learned. He is aware of how his instincts marshal the repetoires of art's legacy and emerges with an impressive originality and provocative creative expression. Marion Kryczka's works, be it in oil or pastel and charcoal, are centered in interiors and intimate space. "Studio Interior" (36"x24") again demonstrates Kryczka's placement of the fleeting -- a mounted goose---- -- in the midground while, on shelves in the back, a soft daylight filters on an image by de La Tour. The latter is destined to outlast the former. And personal history exerts a strong force in his content, which may be what led to many of the themes in this showing. His Polish heritage does emerge in a number of works, and it may explain the very particular awareness of individual mortality and sense of what does persist within time. This sensibility across generations and cultures is strongly in evidence in works such as the "Self Portrait with Parents Photos" (36"x24") and "Still Life for My Dead Uncles" (22"x28"). He is certainly familiar with the great tragedies in his own ethnic heritage, but concurrent with that is a sense of forbearance, a savoring of life and a hope of future. His palette is lively and the effects of light are masterfully deployed. Perhaps it is a sense that life is to be welcomed and savored while possible that lends his nudes a subdued sensuousness. It is noticeably strong in his pastel and charcoal renderings such as "Two Women in the Studio" (30"x22") or "Lamp and Women" (21"x19"). In viewing much of Kryczka's paintings, for no obvious reason the later self-portraits of Rembrandt kept coming to mind. As divergent as their work is, the two artists would probably get along well in spirit. Perhaps those who wish this world to be other than it is never savor the life they are given. Kryczka's themes give the impression of a painter who knows the party must end and might have unpleasant moments in between, but who has enjoyed opportunity while it is present. His work knows that flesh must sag and wither and die, and ultimately the bottle of Zytnia vodka will be empty. It is there in his paintings. The artist enjoys the experience all the more in that knowledge. As Kryczka himself said: "Hopes, joys, but what it ends in... we know." Quiet regret, but no morbidity in Kryczka's vanitas. And there is a relaxed pleasure in his light and with his nudes. His art would agree with William Butler Yeats "Man is in love and loves what vanishes." But the artist replies -- art endures. And not just art. As a closing piece in a well-planned exhibition, on a pillar as one prepares to leave, is "The New Born Daughter" (32"x28"). It is the artist's affirmation of a different and equally enduring continuity. "Drawings and Paintings" by Marion Kryczka is definitely a show to see, --G. Jurek Polanski Jurek Polanski has previously written and art edited for Strong Coffee in Chicago. He's also well known and respected among the Chicago museums and galleries. Jurek is currently a Visual Arts Correspondent for ArtScope.net. |
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