for the catalogue of my solo show I speak when I must  at Munipal Gallery bwa in Bydgoszcz, 7.05-15.06.2024
My first meeting with Alicja is of a business nature. Early afternoon, a sunny studio and coffee – served in a mug you can hide behind and pretend to drink when you have nothing to say. Alicja talks to two other artists about the upcoming exhibition, which I will be writing about as usual. For a long time, I have made most of my contacts as a producer of occasional literature. The circumstances are different each time, so I have no way of settling in and, despite the experience, I still feel new. If I have a certain authority (and I think I do, since I have been approached), it is primarily because, for some reason, some people believe in it. Everything depends on it, with professionalism being about skilfully sidestepping this issue. In business, art and wherever image is at stake, the old rule of successful romance still applies: you have to set the mood,  making awkward gestures meaningful and charming, and for the sake of the cause turn a blind eye to the technicalities of the situation. It may sound ridiculous, but it is serious.Unfortunately, even such a universal method is not always effective. For example, towards Alicja I feel quite helpless, because she talks about everything I would be able to think of, to the point where I begin to doubt whether I have come across anything myself or heard anything from her. She talks, so I don’t have to and I remain silent from behind my mug. Fortunately, once you’ve been taken for wise, it’s terribly difficult to prove your own stupidity, because no one is sure whether such, for example, silence is not latent wisdom. The problem with symbolic capital is that it is quite elusive, so it requires ceremonies to sustain itself. Perpetually evasive content sometimes needs to be pinned down with a strong slogan or gesture. With such occasions in mind, Alicja crafted a set of large paper brushes, which she folded against one of the walls like an altar. With this kind of brush, every art school graduate should be dubbed an artist. We agree that this is a career that often develops in an aura of misunderstanding. The accompanying communication failures used to be masked by a well-known aphorism: what cannot be talked about, must be kept quiet about. Perhaps I am the only one who finds it strange, but it forbids something that is not possible anyway. And we care about that on average, because we can quite a lot and we already have a problem with that. This is precisely Alicja’s theme – the problem of free choice. And mine, since I decided to write about it for her.It starts as early as school. Almost everyone who has studied art has a particular attitude to the experience, often quite critical. Not excluding Alicja. Her Bezgłowy mentor (Headless Mentor), books of Capital made of chocolate coins which is eaten by ventriloquists; her Dobra wiedza (Good Knowledge) and hundreds of general landscapes (outdoor exercises without leaving home) are all undoubtedly a final tribute to the experiences that are not alien to me: attempts to capture image in relation to knowledge. And that’s what is done in school and therefore talked about a lot, by design for teaching purposes and for the sake of art. However, one might get the impression that, on the contrary, art exists precisely so that there is something to talk about. It is an ideal subject because it resists conclusion. The conversation about it can go on indefinitely because it leads nowhere, and it is a pleasure to immerse oneself freely and aimlessly in the speech. It’s not about conclusions, by the way, it’s about a sense of reality. Its boundaries in our case are secured by the work, which stands as it stood, whatever one may say. In this sense, the thing I see is more meaningful than the word, although its meaning does not involve any content. Quite the opposite, with a radical lack of content, which in the vernacular is called depth. When someone invokes depth, there is actually nothing more to say. This is more or less how art discourse develops: as free-style chatter that targets an area outside of speech and is therefore always missed. Consequently, each participant must find his or her own place in it.I once read somewhere that an artist is someone who is so committed to art that they cannot live without it. They create because they have to, which could be called a mission, but just as well an intrusive or unconditional reflex; and that sounds so self-serving. In order to remain independent, the artist must therefore be unique. It is said that a free man does not have to do anything, but such freedom is simply freedom of movement. A vacuum that sooner or later turns into boredom. This is definitely not enough if we want to be alive, because life has the traits of radicalism. Perhaps the most radical choice is precisely the one that cannot be justified, an assault on the instance of sense and common sense. Which is wonderfully in keeping with the condition of the artist, who works in the dark anyway.
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Weronika Wronecka