Grand opening: February 4, 2022, at 6:00 PM
Duration: February 5 – March 5, 2022
Sometimes, we look forward to it and, at other times, it strikes us too soon. However, it always delineates the proportions of everything that preceded it. At the “Happy The End” exhibition, we are concomitantly presenting the works of two artists who passed away almost simultaneously at the end of 2021. In his recent works, Paweł was obsessed with the end theme. At times, it was subtle as a shadow accentuating life – an indispensable part of a stencil – and sometimes, perspicuous like a carnivalesque danse macabre.In Konrad’s art, on the other hand, the end was malleable and expandable. In his paintings, the artist explored this theme as a material sphere and as an experience set in a cosmic space-time. Thus, producing something likely to have a continuation. In Piekarnia (“Bakery”), these two distinctive, yet united by the space, exhibitions reflect different approaches to representing the world, as well as different ways of dealing with an end. The former way focuses on the current issues that one should deal with here and now, while the latter is more abstract, seeking order to cope with the things that remain a mystery.
Below photo-documentation of the opening night by M. Kujda.
Happy The End. Paweł Jarodzki
The exhibition consists of a novel, unshown material gathered during the past two years in Paweł Jarodzki’s new workshop at Haukego-Bosaka street. Many people were familiar with this space, which functioned as an open workshop, a meeting place to discuss art and recent events, and a charity collection spot for victims of the political situation at the border during the 2021 lockdowns. For Paweł, this new space (he moved in there at the end of 2019) was a strong draft in a chimney. He painted there a lot. He transformed known from previous works techniques anew: roller, tessellation, stencil, drawing, freehand painting, achieving gradually more ease. Some say that there was more anger than subtleness in his works. Certainly, “Gdzie są dzieci” (“Where are the children”) is far from ironic. However, a work formally related to it, “Wszystkim się podoba III wojna światowa” (“Everyone likes World War III”), with its characteristic hippie, soft and freehand manner typography – slightly imitating Jan Sawka, who was one of Paweł’s favorite artists – represents the essence of Jarodzki’s works that struck the most. A typical for our simple minds, addicted to dopamine, silly doggerel, and an absurd, stripped off from hope vision of reality. In one of the workshop corners, we found a map with acrylic writing, “Maybe it’s not that bad?”. This is another example of a provocation, like a stencil, asking, “Is it going to be as fun after death?”.
The title of the exhibition is related to one of Paweł’s most famous stencils from that period, “Happy The End. Coming Soon!”. Paweł, being a lover of good cinematic suspense and drama, repeatedly placed it on canvas or paper. Between the excitement with that which is about to come (Coming Soon!) and the ease of epic ending (The End),there is a whole life. The whole “now” of the world. Imitating the style of attention-seeking commercial ads and headlines, the art of Jarodzki places the spectator in the center of the story. We are equal with the author in that we also become a narrator. It depends solely on us how the story will unfold.
Paweł Jarodzki (May 1, 1958 – November 22, 2021)
A painter, drawer, author of texts, installations, comic books, stencils. From 1982 connected to the Luxus group, authors of its manifestos. Lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroław. Between 2002 and 2018, the general curator at BWA Wrocław. His private life and art were centered in Wrocław.
Happy The End. Konrad Jarodzki
Konrad Jarodzki’s exhibition is centered around the beginnings and the end of his creative process. Experiencing the space constituted the source of his artistic path, which, at the beginning was pulsating, organic, “living tissue and matter”[1], to become an infinitely growing abstract form.
His early works are represented by the “Głowy” (“Heads) cycle, which began in the 1960s. They are testimonies of the experiments with painterly matter and nonfigurative methods of imagining that broke away from the academic conventions of portraying human and space. Jarodzki used a traditional painterly theme of a head to deal with war destruction of the world and build a new esthetic and existential order. By combining figurative art with an expressive organic abstraction and matter painting, Jarodzki analyzed, demolished, and re-composed new visual forms centered around the theme of a smashed, shot, or torn head. Artist’s precognition placed it in relation to the fearsome boundlessness of space and the forces tearing apart previous categories of perception.
Artist’s further path took the form of abstract inner landscapes, which he called “space-time situations”. While Jarodzki was exploring geological structures (“Tektonika”(“Tectonics”) series), the relation between micro- and macrocosm, matter and void, he finally approached quantum consciousness in his artistic path. It entered the world of elementary particles (“Kwarki” (“Quarks”)), magnetic fields (“Magnetar”), the nature of light (“Światło” (“Light”)), gravity (“Grawitacja” (“Gravity”)), to finally dissolved in the infinity of the Universe (“Kosmos” (“Cosmos”)). A stop on this path is constituted by the performative voyage to the interior of the Earth degraded by brown coal quarrying. Its testimony is the documentation of the action “Registration of Space”, which took place during a plain-air “Ziemia Zgorzelecka 1971” (“Zgorzelecka Land 1971”) nearby the Turow mine in Opolno-Zdroj. Selected moments of Jarodzki’s art are accompanied by his self-commentary depicted by sets of photographs documenting his works. Their configuration reflects how artist arranged his creative process, working on his retrospective catalogue.
Konrad Jarodzki (December 31, 1927 – November 23, 2021)
A painter, drawer, architect, pedagogue, member of the “Grupa Wrocławska”. In 1949-1955, he studied at the Architecture Department at Politechnika Wrocławska, in 1955-1958 in PWSSP (“National Graduate School of Plastic Arts”) in Wrocław under the supervision of Eugeniusz Geppert. Connected to Wrocław’s PWSSP as its lecturer. Between 1992 and 1999 Jarodzki served as its rector. As PWSSP’s rector, Konrad directed the transformation of the school into the Academy of Fine Arts in 1996.
[1]K. Jarodzki, Przestrzeń jako tworzywo, ASP Wrocław 1999.
Happy The End. Paweł Jarodzki
Choice of works: Bożena Grzyb-Jarodzka
Arrangement: Jerzy Kosałka, Ewa Ciepielewska
Photos, archives, and graphics: Anastazja Jarodzka, Renata Jarodzka
Text contributor: Anka Mituś
Film archives thanks to: Mariusz Jodko (Entropia Gallery), Tomasz Opania (The Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław), Agnieszka Mazanek
Documentation of works and workshop: Tomasz Kizny
Production, organization, communication: 66P team
In cooperation with: The Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław
Coordinators: 66P Subjective Institute of Culture, The Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław
Happy The End. Konrad Jarodzki
Curator, text contributor: Joanna Sokołowska
Consultant: Marek Śnieciński [GS2] (The Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław)
Photo archives: Andrzej Bulik, Czesław Chwiszczuk, Waldemar Plusa
Film archives thanks to: Łukasz Śródka, Tomasz Opania
Photographic documentation of the artistic action “Zapis przestrzeni” (“Registration of Space”), Turów, 1971; Natalia LL, photography, scans from negatives, thanks to: ZW Foundation/ Natalia LL archives, prints in the collection of National Museum in Wrocław
Production, organization, communication: The Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław, 66P team
Coordinators: 66P Subjective Institute of Culture, The Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław, Geppart Gallery