Ryszard Wasko
Ryszard Wasko Time Sculptures
For Wasko, the transformation that took place in his art from the 1970s to the 1980s is tantamount to a shift from video and photography to sculpture and painting: during this period, he extensively tested the boundaries of the different media. In his private life this was as well a time of great change. Immediately after his participation in the famous Pier + Ocean show at the Hayward Gallery in London in 1980, he organized the legendary exhibition Construction in Process in Łódź, Poland, which was described by Richard Nonas as an event that happens only once in a generation. The years that followed were very intense for him politically. Eventually he emigrated, first to England, and then to Berlin, where he received a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Later, he came to realize that he had considered his earlier artistic activities as a kind of battle, whereas the Berlin years had brought him artistic freedom. In order to begin anew in Berlin, Wasko had to return to his roots: to the history of the avant-garde in the 1920s, and the origins of experimental film with which he had grown up during his studies at the Łódź Film School. Here, especially the artists of the group BLOK were of significance: Katarzyna Kobro, Władysław Strzemiński, and Mieczysław Szczuka. This is where he established a link in his work: his point of departure, were the writings by the author of The Theory of Vision, Wladyslaw Strzeminski. Wasko s relief images From Darkness into the Light, whose color transitions are hardly perceptible to the human eye, recall Strzeminski s unistic compositions, and yet they are by far more radical than these. In Time Sculpture at Black Paint (1986) and Run Up And Cross (1985), Wasko started with separating a standard 35 mm film by breaking the linear continuity of the frames. This changed the rhythm and tension. He used different techniques such as drawing and painting to create relief like surfaces by building up layers of paint on different materials such as cardboard, linen and wood. In this time consuming process, he worked towards a three-dimensional pattern that eventually emerged from it. In Wasko s works, time is an indispensible factor of the viewing process that connects both sculpture and film. In 1987, Wasko created a small sculpture in a private garden in Berlin Zehlendorf that carried the title Quinta Essentia: a sculpture made of air, for which a hole in the shape of a step pyramid was scooped out of the earth. The geometrical form of the sculpture, not corresponding with the natural qualities of earth in any way, indicates that the sculpture was only supposed to have a short life, lasting at most up until the next rain. This project was followed by others, most of them unrealized or unrealizable, such as the idea of a pink fluorescent tube that was to be placed inside a hole in the ground filled with milk and then frozen (Rose-Milk Sculpture, 1988-1994). His utopias also take place on the canvas, as with the series of pictures painted with pure pigments, in which the same highly odd, sharp-edged forms are repeated again and again. These are lakes: Twin Green Lake (1989) and Green Lake Along Blue Path (1990). Why do lakes like these do not occur in nature? After all, there are mountains and rocks that appear to be angular, stair-like variations of a theme of more basic geometrical shapes, such as the square. To understand the square was easy, yet I wanted to look inside, and explore its inner tensions. Hence these forms similar to staircases. Simple elements like these require simple actions: There was something ritual about it, Wasko says.
Quinta Essentia, 1988, silver gelatine print and pencil on paper, 42,6 35,2 cm next page: Green Lake along Blue Path, 1990, soot, pigment, oil, glue, canvas, 105 x 130 cm
Sculptural Drawings and Painting Drawings, 1985 acrylic, pencil on paper, 30 21 cm next page: Time Sculpture at Black Paint, 1986, sculpture, 470 250 6 cm The outset for the relief found on this room-filling sculpture was a standard 35 mm film, which the artist separated by breaking the linear continuity of the frames. This created a change of rythm and tension. The result of this were lines made up of individual sections still appealing to the original material, yet the patterns were made visible through a time-consuming process of building up thin layers of paint. In this way, time is an indispensible factor in Wasko s work that connects both sculpture and film.
Painting Drawings, 1985, acrylic, pencil and oil chalk on paper, 30 21 cm next page: Dark into Light, 1988, acrylic on board, 160 110 cm Dark into Light No 2, 1988, acrylic on board, 160 110 cm
Homage for the Street, 1987 acrylic and linen on board, 1100 800 7 cm Many of Wasko s works from the 1980s are still in contact with film, which he rejected as the medium of expression, but which returned as an intertext. The work s static structure consisting of many elements gives the impression of a process in motion (and thus also in time). Homage for the street is a particularly interesting example for this notion. A construction of many elements black polyhedrons was laid out on the floor of the gallery. Their shape and appearance evoke associations with a piece of film tape. The movement of the film is replaced here by the movement of the spectator.
Ryszard Wasko Born in 1947 in Nysa, Poland. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany SOLO EXHIBITIONS (selection): 2015 Time Sculptures Conceptual Work from the 1980s 2014 Time Frames Conceptual Work from the 70s., ZAK BRANICKA Gallery, Berlin, DE 2013 Genesis, TRAFO Art Center, Szczecin, PL 2009 Contemporary Portrait, Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin, DE 2003 Email Paintings, Center for the Arts, New York 1986 Ryszard Wasko, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, DE 1984 Ryszard Wasko, Kunstverein, Kassel, DE Ryszard Wasko, Hoffman Galerie, Friedberg, DE 1981 Small Retrospective, Museum Folkwang, Essen, DE Hypothetical photography, Galerie m, Bochum, DE 1976 Ryszard Wasko, Galerie m, Bochum, DE 1972 Photography, Filmschool, Lodz, PL GROUP EXHIBITIONS (selection): 2015 The Admirable Number PI, ŻAK BRANICKA, Berlin, DE Art of All, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, DE 2014 Decade of Revolt, Kulturhuset, Stockholm, SE 2008 1,2,3 Avant-Gardes, Tate Modern Gallery, London, UK 2007 Tents, Venice Biennale - Synagogue, Venice, IT 2006 Image/Text, Tate Modern Gallery, London, UK 2006 Analogue: Pioneering Artists Video from Poland, Tate Modern Gallery, London, UK 2005 Open Systems, Tate Modern Gallery, London, UK 2003 A History of Polish Avantgarde Film, MOMA, New York,US 2001 Markers- Project, Venice Biennale, Venice, IT 2000 From Here to There, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, DE Polish Film School, MOMA, New York, US 1999 Oreste Project, Venice Biennale - Italian Pavillion, Venice, IT 1997 Another Language, Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, IL 1991 In-between Project, Venice Biennale - Turkish Pavillion, Venice 37 Rooms, Kunstwerke, Berlin, DE 1987 Homage to Joseph Beuys, Klaus Staeck Galerie, Heidelberg, DE 1986 Idee, Raum, Konstruktion, Kunsthalle, Bielefeld, DE 1983 Praesence Polonaise, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, FR 1982 Sol LeWitt s Choice, Cenobio Visualit à Gallery, Milano, IT 1981 Konstrukcja w Procesie [Construction in Process], Lodz, PL 1980 Pier + Ocean: Construction in the Art of the 70s, Hayward Gallery, London, UK; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, NL Sydney Biennale 1979 Works & Words, DeAppel Gallery and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, NL Film as Film, Hayward Gallery, London, UK Lindenstr. 35, 10969 Berlin +49 30 61107375 www.zak-branicka.com mail@zak-branicka.com ŻAK BRANICKA, 2016; concept: Asia Żak Persons and Monika Branicka, cooperation: Sofia Hauser and Nora Hillermann; photos by Marcus Schneider front cover: Eckfilm No3, 1985, acrylic and linen on board, 40 220 15 cm back cover: Black film No 1, 1983, acrylic and film on board, 80 110 cm