exhibition: 8 Dec 2022–14 Jan 2023
organisers: Geppart Gallery of the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław and 66P Subjective Institution of Culture
curator: Marek Śnieciński
In his paintings Konrad Jarodzki often moved at the intersection of abstraction and figuration – he did so, for example, when in the 1960s and 1970s his works revolved around the motif of the head, which was his way of confronting the traumatic war memories (e.g. in the series Torn Heads). This intersection was also the right place to formulate questions about the essence of creativity and imagery; it was here that the artist could grapple with the painterly matter and engage in a creative dialogue with existentialism or structuralism. His artistic inquiries into space that he undertook in the following decades were characterised by a tension between what can be identified and named and what escapes naming, between abstraction and what we recognise as a refined aesthetic structure of an organic nature.
Although his temperament of a perfectionist would always be evident in his works, the aesthetic and formal perfection of drawing and painting was not an aim in itself for him. Rather, it was a tool, an instrument that enabled him to touch upon important themes, talk about his fascinations and delights, existential fears and threats. In his works, Jarodzki commented on the surrounding reality, both the material one, which could be accessed through the senses, and the cultural one, manifested in various artistic phenomena, intellectual debates or ideological manipulations. He was therefore a kind of diagnostician of the present, but far from “priestly” gestures and attitudes that put form over substance. He had little interest in the romantic myth of the artist – he preferred a Beuysian attitude, in which the artist is aware of the fact that his various activities are phenomena included in the fabric of everyday life and thus an integral part of life. Jarodzki believed that the world is what our narrations about it make it to be, that telling about the world, about how it is and how it could be, is an ancient domain of art. While doing so, he never practised artistic journalism, he never made ad hoc comments about art that are usually short-lived. His works, catalysed by various experiences, have a timeless, universal character.
Konrad Jarodzki – born in 1927 in Zaklików (Kraśnik district), died in 2021 in Wrocław. Painter, architect, and draftsman. In the years 1949-1958 Jarodzki studied architecture at the Wrocław University of Science and Technology and painting at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Wrocław. A long-time teacher at the Wrocław Academy of Art and Design (since 1991 as a full professor), dean of the Faculty of Painting and Sculpture (1981-194), rector (1993-1999). Member and participant of the Wrocław Group. Commissioner of exhibitions and symposiums The Road and the Truth in the Church of the Holy Cross in Wrocław (1985 -1987). Author of several dozen individual exhibitions and participant of many collective presentations in Poland and abroad, creator of numerous award-winning architectural designs.
Photo by Linda Parys, courtesy of mia ART GALLERY
Konrad Jarodzki’s exhibition is accompanied by the premiere of a bilingual monograph published by the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław in the series “Wrocław Artistic Milieu.” The publication will be available for purchase during the opening. You can also buy it in the 66P shop (on the spot and online: www.66P.pl/sklep).