Monographic room — The works

Etiuda

Étude · Pole Mokotowskie, Warsaw, 2010

Two steles of pale sandstone, more than two metres tall, planted side by side in the grass. A narrow fissure runs between them, and the two edges that bound it answer one another: where one draws back, the other stands proud. They stand together like the two halves of something opened along a sinuous line, and set upright again a hand’s breadth apart.

Etiuda means étude, in the sense musicians give the word: a short piece, made on a single difficulty, and complete. It has stood in the Pole Mokotowskie, the great park of Warsaw, since the afternoon of 26 September 2010.

01

The work

The two steles newly finished, seen from below against the sky, and the group in the grass of the park some years later.

Etiuda seen from below against the sky: two steles of pale sandstone side by side, their undulating edges answering one another, the gravel of the worksite at their feet
The family archive
The two steles of Etiuda entire in the grass of the park on a summer day: the left one narrower, with an ochre vein, the right one broader, with the wave profile
Photograph: Jolanta Dyr, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
The series it belongs toPark stonesAb Ovo · SferaPrimary forms made to stand in the open: Ab Ovo in Warsaw, Child for a Moment, Shelter, the two Civilisations.See the whole series
02

The opened block

Art Konfrontacje · Warsaw, 2010

The work is made at a sculpture symposium in the Pole Mokotowskie. The banner stretched over the field says it in full: «Art Konfrontacje — Plener rzeźbiarski. Sztuka w przestrzeni publicznej», art in public space. The sculptors work in the middle of the grass, inside an enclosure of tape, the blocks resting on pallets and people stopping to watch; the sculptures of that edition are unveiled on 26 September 2010, at three in the afternoon, in the park itself. No gallery, no indoor opening: the inauguration is an autumn afternoon on the grass.

Antonina is one of the six sculptors of the edition — the city daily photographs them together on what it calls «the future sculpture square» and names them one by one: Dariusz Kowalski, Teresa Pastuszka-Kowalska, Grzegorz Szkopowicz, Jacek Muldner-Nieckowski, Antonina Wysocka-Jonczak, Wiktor Gajda. At the foot of the finished work a red plate remains, engraved with her name, the title and the name of the event.

It is the last of her open-air worksites, and the closest to home: after Slovakia, Slovenia, Germany, Austria, Sardinia and the Apennines, the last block she opens is in Warsaw, in a park where people walk the dog.

And the form is the form of a cut. The two edges that face one another correspond wave for wave: where one draws back the other stands proud, and between them a fissure of light remains as wide as a hand. But the line is no accidental fracture, it is drawn — on the one it descends in broad, regular waves, on the other it takes them up in the negative. The outer faces are worked with a close point, rough and even; the inner profiles are the clean part, the part one looks at. Whoever walks past them sees two figures facing one another; whoever walks around them sees a single thing, reopened.

Newspaper photograph: six sculptors posing in a row on the grass of the park on a summer day; Antonina Wysocka-Jonczak is second from the right
The six of the symposium, posing on what the paper calls «the future sculpture square». From the left: Dariusz Kowalski, Teresa Pastuszka-Kowalska, Grzegorz Szkopowicz, Jacek Muldner-Nieckowski, Antonina Wysocka-Jonczak, Wiktor Gajda. From «Gazeta Wyborcza» Warszawa, 2010
03

Five weeks

The worksite, from arrival to unveiling

The photographs the family takes at the symposium, time after time, set the work of that last summer in order: the arrival at the field, the stone opening, the two halves drawn together to check that they answer one another, the crane, and the afternoon on which the work stays.

  • Antonina Wysocka-Jonczak standing at the symposium, white hat, white shirt open over dark work overalls, quarry gloves in her hand; behind her a marquee and the banner of the event
    21 August. Antonina at the worksite, gloves in hand. Behind her the banner of «Art Konfrontacje».
  • A long block of sandstone lying on beams and pallets in the grass, its upper edge already cut in broad waves; around it, chips of stone and the worksite tape
    24 August. The block lying on the pallets: the wave profile is already cut the whole length of the flank.
  • Two blocks of sandstone drawn together one above the other on the pallets, their undulating profiles facing, in the middle of the park grass
    7 September. The two stones drawn together: the profiles are checked one against the other.
  • The finished block lying on the grass, its surface worked with a close point and its wave edge cleanly cut
    11 September. The work is done, the stone is still lying on the grass.
  • The setting in place: one stele already stands in the grass, the other hangs from the straps of a lorry crane while several men guide it towards the pit
    20 September. The setting: one stele already stands, the other comes down from the crane.
  • The two steles standing on the bed of gravel, seen close to: the fissure that separates them, the ochre vein on the left stele and the red plate at the foot of the right
    26 September. The work is unveiled, on its bed of gravel, with the plate at its foot.
04

The last stone

2010, and a second hand

Etiuda is the last of her large outdoor works. Forty years of open-air worksites begun in the wood at Moravany — the timber of Slovakia, the stone of Germany, the marble of Austria, the granite of Sardinia — close on this block, in a park in Warsaw, a few kilometres from the studio. Afterwards the sculpture goes on but changes scale: the wooden pieces of 2011 stand on a table.

And she does not finish it alone. It was brought to completion by her sister, Teresa Celestyna Wysocka: it is the only work in the catalogue closed by two hands, and it is said here because it is a fact of the work and not a private detail — anyone who knows the labour of a stone two metres forty high knows what it means to hand its ending to someone else.

The form, for once, says exactly the same thing. Two stones cut to answer one another, finished a hand’s breadth apart: neither of them explains itself alone, and the sense of the work lies entirely in that fissure — in the little that separates, and holds together, two things made to stand close.

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