Contesting the issues of changeability and transience in art often lies in making the elements of the presented world unrealistic and specifically ordered, building sophisticated metaphors. Artists use the well - known mechanisms of the viewers' reception, they undertake aggressive, spectacular actions.

Piotr Ciesielski's graphic work proves that important stirring problems can also be expressed by means of a simple poetic gesture. Most of his graphic works are dominated by a particular mood. The artist builds it by means of expression close to those used in painting. It is hardly surprising as there are a lot of graphics which were created at the same periods of time as paintings. It resulted in the constant mutual exchange of experience, the attempts to transfer it into the range of different artistic techniques, to achieve mutual enrichment. When one form was 'worn out', the artist tried another one. He simultaneously continued his search for new technologies which could express his message.

Piotr Ciesielski was mainly concerned with etching and aquatint, but he also tried other techniques. He made copper engravings, soft - ground etchings, heliogravures, linocuts. It is his painting where the artist puts stress on the contrast of both plans. In graphics their juxtaposition is also essential, being the source of emotions.

In this context Ciesielski's graphic works are distinguished by a significant simplicity of the foreground when compared with density and variety of forms of the background. A bird's feather, a twig, a flower, a toy go forward - in front of the view of a forest thicket, a fragment of a landscape, a collective photograph of an anonymous society. Like in painting, they cast acute shadows on the surfaces which are in the background, they destroy the impression of depth, they shorten the perspective. Due to this phenomenon they seem to be right at hand. Made in an objective perfect way (a mastery graphic line!) they encourage us to pick them from the sheets of paper. Most of the graphics are small works. In these works fragility and transitory character of subtle motives become more and more dominating.

We come to a conclusion that these delicate graphic compositions are equivalent to small poetic forms. Like in haiku where a poet tries to grasp the heart of the matter in a few lines, there is a condensed creative reflection in these subtle forms. The works are accompanied by complicated titles, a kind of phrase summing them up. The artist emphasizes that these additional statements are very important to him and the works should be read out as the whole.

The latest cycle of works was enriched by fragments of poems which inspired them. Although some images refer to the message of quoted poems, they are not their direct equivalent. It is the mood and reflection after reading the poems which are more important. No wonder Piotr Ciesielski refers to the poetry by Father Twardowski or Poświatowska - poets endowed with the ability to close the essence of an experience in few words, creators of apt and picturesque metaphors, appealing to us by means of their sophisticated (poetic) as well as simple language. These latest works, when compared with the earlier ones, are characterised by significantly richer use of colours. Both in monochromatic and colourful graphics colours are vivid, bright; moreover in the latter they strike with bold contrasts. It refers both to the works with graphic and photographic background. Colour became unrestrained in painting where it obtained a maximum tension, and as there is a constant exchange between painting and graphics (as well as photography) it became more intensive in graphics too.

In graphic works the artist refers to a large extent to motives of nature. He reflects on rapid changes in nature. Those which are natural and those provoked by Man. Man who - like in heliogravure - by his spectral image reminds us of the time passing, makes us consider the essence and sense of human endeavours. If we add here the symbols of cultural heritage present in iconographic motives (figures and works of Avicenna, Gutenberg, Dürer) and the universal (determining composition) forms - the fundamental elements of different symbolic systems, it becomes obvious that it is a profoundly humanistic creation. Those graphic, photographic and painting worlds - which in a sense belong to someone else - actually let us build reflection concerning every human being, touch the essence of en globe existence, problems of human condition, eschatological issues.

They are the result of everlasting fears and anxieties. They become a kind of reflection concerning some fundamental issues and an attempt to answer some simple yet significant questions. The universal character of expression corresponds to a sometimes random selection of motives placed next to one another, objects different from one another as far as their character and origin are concerned, in the same way as people in the photographs are strangers, with requisites selected at random.

The process of creation becomes a method which enables us to get closer to some issues. To find out more about them helps us tame them. We are to a larger extent reconciled with the world and with ourselves though we realise that we might never reach the truth.

Dariusz Leśnikowski

Translated by Elżbieta Rodzeń-Leśnikowska

Piotr Ciesielski is an insatiable artist, which is a kind of nuisance to art critics concerned with his work. Dealing with graphics, painting and photography he often combines them together in such a way that it seems to be difficult to distinguish the separate spheres of their mutual interaction within a piece of art. Some intellectual or artistic issues are common for all the artist's activities and they can not be analysed at the level of one art only. Thus a critic faces a difficult decision of how to select characteristic issues of the distinguished areas.

What strikes us in Piotr Ciesielski's paintings is undoubtedly objectivism of presenting compositional plans. Objects are created on canvas with the use of very realistic means of expression. It can particularly be observed in the background presenting a fragment of a landscape or a group portrait, the theme which could equally be the main individual motif of a work. Being a graphic or painting representation of a photographic image or, as recently, a photography made by means of gummi or heliogravure technique, the motif of the background is expressed with an unquestionable workshop mastery. A careful observer, however, will notice that the image is certainly realistic, credible, just 'photographic' yet at the same time most often monochromatic, as if ghostly, under - exposed and a little blurred. The lack of a wide tonal distinction makes the image seem to be flat. We become aware of the fact that the artist deliberately does not form visual depth within this plan. In the early works the motives constituting the background for the first plan were precisely painted by the artist. Piotr Ciesielski reflected e.g. the appearance of newspaper pages (Trybuna Ludu!) with a perverse precision. However, the use of a newspaper motif as a background limited the perspective.

It let the artist give up the attempts of searching for means of realistic reflection of the three - dimensional aspect of objects in the subsequent plans. Objects of the foreground, casting acute shadows on the background, effectively did away with the illusion of spacious depth.

Ciesielski soon resigned from painting the background - not only because of technical or time reasons, but also because both layers copied from nature were too close to each other as far as their existence and relations with reality are concerned. The artist began to combine in one work different images of reality: the medial one obtained by means of a camera lens with the pictorial one being a result of direct observation. A picture photographed with the use of a medium (which seems to reflect the reality in a perfect way though it actually distorts it) and a picture which is an effect of earlier observations are more remote from each other as far as the relations with reality are concerned.

The artistic effect is stronger. When the illusion of space is disturbed in a simple way ( shorter perspective, shadows cast on the surface of the background), the disappointment with the apparent photographic realism is more severe than in case of the image of nature made with the use of a brush or a burin. Here we face a surprising paradox - a painting becomes more realistic and closer to real life than a photograph. A deliberate renunciation of conventions and demystification of elements which usurp the right to be an equivalent of reality or even its substitute - which we often deal with in our picture and visual civilisation - make us consider the issue of the essence of realism in art and the problems of relevance or irrelevance of an object and its image.

In this context, when Piotr Ciesielski's work was commented it was referred to the search characteristic of a few trends of the late 20th century: Hyper Realism, Conceptual Art, and particularly Pop Art - and here especially to the work of Jasper Johns and Bob Rauschenberg who intended to get rid of the distinction between an object and its image.

Although such a perspective is certainly quite close to him or at least he is fascinated with it (he himself defined his approach as Polish pop realism) he found his own original way to express his reflections, being - unlike the artists mentioned above - not indifferent to the image motives used in his work.

Fully three - dimensional light and shade modelled objects - mainly the components of still lives - are painted with workshop mastery. Stones, dried twigs, pieces of bread, worn - out clothes and furniture, damaged toys are sometimes shown in an unusual perspective, being somehow in a wrong place, in an unnatural created surrounding, accompanied by ghostly people and things out of this world.

The pictorial motives of the foreground are similar in their character to the mood created by the nostalgic background. Featured by the time passing they somehow complete the vision of the past world.

Statics of objects and people (contrasting with the rhythm of geometrical divisions of the background), simplicity of situations and gestures, intensifying the impression of solemnity, endow people and objects with monumentality and dignity. The central classic composition based on the shape of regular geometric figure makes the works stable and in a way sophisticated. The main motif itself conveys the poetic quality as well as the disturbing juxtaposition of both plans of the composition. Contrast of the plans which form the image becomes a significant expression of the world interpretation. It results in a kind of dramatic suspense.

Some projects are conceived on a scale of a monumental fresco; the artist creates a series of paintings which he finishes when the motif is out of date or the form is not valid any more. We try to link the fragments of the world created by the artist. We penetrate them discovering the secrets of people and objects. We turn to the past regretting the time going by, never to return. We realise how transitory the traces of reality are. Things which belong to the present seem to be momentary relative qualities

Dariusz Leśnikowski

Translated by Elżbieta Rodzeń-Leśnikowska

In Piotr Ciesielski's works photography is an attribute of various artistic solutions; mainly it builds the background for the main motives in graphics and painting. It is a source of particular atmosphere predominating the composition. After transferring into e.g. heliogravure and owing to the colouring effects some photographs become individual graphic works. Ciesielski also transfers motives from negatives on paper or canvas, making perfect prints in the photographic gummi technique.

Photographs he uses are a kind of medium which helps us look into the past, into the reality of other people. In this process a particular position is taken by a collection of glass negatives - a gift from a provincial photographer. Being a 'testimony of presence', having intimate relationships with someone's life, they simultaneously play a significant role in activities which endow the artist's gestures with the quality of a work of art.

The plates with negatives express the time passing. Images evoked by them, full of traces of damage and deformations, still intensify the feeling of facing the past, participate in a discussion on the time going by, create a unique atmosphere. Moreover the artist arranges photograms in various configurations, creating new exciting contexts and, at the same time, not depriving the photographs of their own distinct stories. The photographs become hardly 'realistic' - not only due to natural mechanic damage of negatives but also due to the choice of special techniques: heliogravure and gummi which have the effect of softness, blur, rarefied air or drizzling light.

The arrangement of photograms, used in painting or graphics, is a kind of compositional network contrasting with the arrangement of the foreground. In individual photographs it becomes an autonomous geometric composition of forms with deliberately imposed rhythms and surface divisions.

The impact of colour search introduces an unusual quality into these works. Next to the photograms with 'natural' arrangements of grey or black and white - at a certain stage there appear intensive, hardly possible in a given technique colours; these effects correspond to the results of search in painting and are a subsequent example of mutual permeation of arts in Piotr Ciesielski's work.

The artist's separate achievement is based on individual nude photographs, including those which are the element of the background in painting compositions and those which are individual works, either made in gummi technique, colour sophisticated, posed - yet still sensual - photographs of beautiful models, or functioning within the compositions developed in a digital system. Photographic nudes, being a part of a composition on canvas, are juxtaposed with painting nudes. Assuming that our natural human perception might be very precise and the knowledge about human beings becomes more complete after a long direct contact with a model, the artist turns to the traditional painting creation of a portrait of a nude human figure. The enormous potential of human perception enriched by sensitivity and awareness of various contexts guarantee the creation of an image of a female body which will be more complete, more genuine and at the same time more sensual.

Emphasising that a contemporary human being obtains his knowledge being attacked by various stimuli, information transformed by media, the artist combines different images of reality: painting and photographic ones within one canvas. Various images of a model placed in the background - giving the picture rhythm and dynamism, copied in different size, facing different directions, standing in various, sometimes brave and provocative poses - put stress on the indefinite and incomplete character of a picture. Permanence and realism of any portrait are relative, its creation is accompanied by a continuous change of models. Ciesielski's nudes, undoubtedly associated with the sphere of human eroticism, being a tribute to beauty and joy of life, bring reflection over inevitable changes which are omnipresent and which also refer to human beings.

Like in all his artistic activities, here the artist puts stress on colour and light - and - shade composition. Ciesielski not only searches for appropriate gradation of colours and shades to present in a realistic way the nuances of human body or objects which the models possesses, but he also uses astonishing distinct tones for the pictorial background, proving to be creatively innovative and enriching the technology of production. All plans of the latest large - format photographs present various aspects of the same phenomenon and belong to the wide sphere of erotic theme.

The artist's activity is complicated. Within one work there are traditional photographic nudes, arranged with other transformed and fragmentarily represented images of models, courageous pictures originating from other areas - e.g. media - as well as the elements of painting compositions projected on a surface. The relationship between surfaces, lines and colours, the unique musical atmosphere and rhythms which figures in the collective photograms are subject to, are a separate and significant quality. Especially in diaporama, an independent thoroughly considered form of presentation, both parts of diptychs correspond to each other, making cohesive compositions of sculptural forms. Their photographic copies reach the limits of pure painting whose characteristic feature is a unique colour arrangement of strong intensive colours. Public presentations of diaporamas enter different areas of art, being a kind of performance, a space - time phenomenon. Under the new circumstances it becomes a source of other varied emotions.

Relationships between all layers of photographs give the works the character of made up quotations. Iconic motives make their way through traces of the artist's interference: stains, damp patches, scratched out lines. The univocal meaning of pictorial elements disappears. Then relativism concerns not only the meaning of iconic components of the work but also the moral or ethic appraisal of functioning of such a composition. The result of the artistic activity - a photographic nude - taken out from the context, reduced to a fragment of the whole, transformed, shows how differently it functions in the designed conditions of the background. A part of the works - in the way free of traditional rigours - is concerned with the human relationships built by gestures of the photographed figures. Their body language shows a variety of psychological relationships which sometimes originate from subconscious processes referring to the human eroticism, where the elements deriving from culture meet the manifestations of pure nature. Piotr Ciesielski's courageous photographic compositions have nothing in common with cheap provocation, they only confirm the fact that man is condemned to an inconsistent existence.

The artist's activities (in graphics or painting) often tend to recall the archetype motives - thus these photographs might be treated as contemporary manifestations of magical gestures which help to liberate imagination restrained by culture; what is marked with Apollonian frigidity may change into Dionysian fever. Sacred and profane, physical and spiritual love are fundamental issues not only in the western culture. Divine quality, vital power of life has also its dark side - destructive passion, sensual impulse which breaks the barriers and endangers the cultural order. In this context the artist's work may be treated as an artistic tale of the inevitable spread of love between two extremes, of sublimation of sensual passion which is forced by our culture to be dignified into a spiritual experience.

Dariusz Leśnikowski

Translated by Elżbieta Rodzeń-Leśnikowska