Zatrzymane w Pamięci
Held in memory · 2004–2006
Between 2004 and 2006 the artist gathers under a single title a series of pastels in which memory takes the shape of rooms and roads: a cleft of light in a green field, a door flung open onto a pale path, a drape drawing shut. The figures are shadows — seated, kneeling, standing on the threshold.
The dense hatching, in small crosses, gives every scene the substance of a fabric: memory is not a sharp image but a weave, and the light has to pass through it. Every sheet carries the autograph title beside the signature.
The rooms
The six sheets of the cycle in the order of its two moments: first the waitings and the despair of 2004, then the three roads of 2006. Always in colour: the deep green and the blue of the night are the work.
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Open the catalogue entry → AW.P.0025 Oczekiwanie
Waiting2004 · pastel · 50 × 60 cm
private collection -
Open the catalogue entry → AW.P.0026 Oczekiwanie
Waiting2004 · pastel · 50 × 60 cm
private collection -
Open the catalogue entry → AW.P.0028 Rozpacz
Despair2004 · pastel · 50 × 60 cm
private collection -
Open the catalogue entry → AW.P.0023 Droga
The road2006 · pastel · 50 × 60 cm
private collectionOn the threshold two figures: one of shadow, one of light.
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Open the catalogue entry → AW.P.0024 Droga II
The road II2006 · pastel · 50 × 60 cm
private collection -
Open the catalogue entry → AW.P.0027 Droga III
The road III2006 · pastel · 50 × 60 cm
private collection
The two moments
2004 · 2006The cycle is born in October 2004, and it is born dark: in the first sheets the light is a cleft descending into a green field, a shaft cutting the darkness, and the figures sit at its feet — seated, kneeling. They are the two Waitings; beside them the Despair, a drape drawing shut around a veiled figure.
Two years later the register changes: the three Droga of 2006 open a door in the wall, and from the door comes a path of light descending towards the viewer. The figures remain shadows, but now they stand on the threshold: one watches the road, one walks it.
The title of the cycle — held in memory — states the method: what memory retains comes back as room, threshold, road. In the catalogue the cycle also includes a seventh sheet, which carries the cycle’s name alone.
The words of the cycle, though, are not born here. «Waiting» is a title the artist had already written in pencil on a design sheet, under two figures standing on a plinth: a sculpture never made. The painted cycle does not develop those designs — it reaches back into their vocabulary.
- Oczekiwanie waiting
- Rozpacz despair
- Droga the road