Artists who are sensitive to the surrounding reality react to the taunts of the world in a variety of ways. Some of them for example represent a reserved attitude, attributing their works with a mockery, or an ironic or jeering comment. The others' reaction is an outrageous expression of gesture painting. Unlike Andrzej Graczykowski who, being involved emotionally, reveals dramatic message by the specific use of a human figure and metaphorical meanings associated with it. The artist interprets the image of the man based on his way of perceiving the reality. He takes advantage of the manner of making things unreal and the manner of distortion (yet avoiding grotesque), which were typical of various trends of expressionistic origin, above all the new figurativeness. The artist, fascinated by Francis Bacon's creation, devotes to him one of his paintings.

Graczykowski's artistic work is dominated by deliberations on human condition and their relations with the world. The artist creates the drama of existence, the man is the subject, with their experience and emotions. The human being, lonely even though often not alone, is often presented in the condition of maladjustment, in the atmosphere full of dramatic tension. Andrzej Graczykowski paints incomplete or dramatically distorted figures set in the unspecified space. He neither burdens the expression with the description of the situation, nor dominates it with too extended narrative or anecdote. The works are characterized by a specific mood, the atmosphere of existential anxiety, a kind of intentional anti-aestheticism with symbolic-catastrophic background.

Paintings are arranged in cycles, the subsequent works discuss a different aspect of the problem until it is considered from different points of view and closed. The artist is aware of the fact that - facing a variety of problems of the contemporary world - it is not possible to create a work which could cover the whole issue in a complex way. Thus he creates works which exist independently and at the same time they are interconnected with the others.

Andrzej Graczykowski's hero is introduced as if in the light of spotlights. Like a clown in a circus or a novice pushed onto a stage at a fair or in the theatre. The spotlight highlights an imperfect frightened human figure, subjected to everyday rituals. The man, a miniscule grain in the face of the power of fate and death, seems to be a little uncertain in their movements and gestures, pitiful in their seriousness, as if unaware of the insignificance of their deeds in the context of eternity. Looking for support, the figures sometimes crowd like miserable creatures on the wings of medieval altars.

In the multi-layered facture of images there are vague figures, sometimes only their heads or faces, which in the colourful images emerge from the background saturated with colour or melted into the colourful tissue. They are often outlined with sharp, determined, linear contour.

Some works expose the image of man as if it was 'second hand'; blurred, unclear, incomplete. Contours of human silhouettes are juxtaposed with spheres of planes filled with colours. The character of images brings to our mind the fragmentary nature of our experience, imperfection of our knowledge and our inability to pass conclusive judgments.

The universal character of the message, as if originating from a morality play, is undoubtedly emphasized by its form. Besides the traditional oil paintings with distinct vivid colours the artist presents works whose nature is technologically complicated. There are also works which are less literal both in their subject and form. The starting point is always a traditionally made author's drawing, a graphic print or a watercolour image. We deal here with a surprising 'masking procedure'; the images are computer processed so that they could be enriched by the artist by means of paints - to gain a new different life. This process emphasizes the need for the transition from what is seemingly finished into another dimension, where there is the necessity for continuous transformations and completion.

Most of the artist's latest works, which at the stage of design or even computer print might already be regarded as independent finished works, are subjected to a unique process of artistic 'embalming'. The images, after a series of additional operations: repainting, drawing some extra elements, which let the artist put stress on the manual aspect and the significance of the traditional way of painting, become finally covered with a specially worked out mysterious matter, a kind of 'plastic material' which provides them with 'eternal indestructible existence'. What is important here is the very fact of the physical lasting of the image. However, even more important factor is the special effect of the phenomenal character of the image which is seen through the millimetre layers of glazed transparent film. The effect of washing out and diluting of once vivid and distinct colour representations endows paintings with depth, the images of flowing facture seem to be messages from the past, belong to another aesthetic and intellectual sphere.

Some works are labeled with appropriate sentences, quotations from Rilke, Herbert. The earlier works were inspired by Brunon Schultz, Artur Międzyrzecki. A universal message will probably be most strongly expressed by the triptych series of black and white works. The artist, concentrating on the central image, later searches for an appropriate comment to close the wings of the triptych. They in turn form the cycles which are created until the source of inspiration runs out. The transformations the works undergo are nearly mystical in their character. Whereas the colourful images are coated with the layer of mysterious 'ground', the monochrome triptychs are wrapped and bound together as if with the use of a buckle, coils of a string, in a bookbinding manner. They seem to be secret albums which we can not look into. They appear to hide some extra message under the visible images. We would like to tear those humiliating ropes, open the files and with a child's curiosity discover the secret knowledge of existence. About the man, their nature, fate and destiny.

The paintings preserve their drawing graphic character. They are expressed by the artist's skillful hand, the artist who has already been experienced as a graphic and a sensitive draughtsman. These values might be recognized in the series of delicate non representative drawings where hardly noticeable lines form almost abstract arrangements, evoke genuine landscapes out of nowhere, sceneries which are woven from spiderweb threads of subtle drafts. Despite their delicate structure they look profound and dramatic. They create a kind of imaginative composition whose dynamism seems to be determined by tension of lines. The artist provokes a dialogue concerning proportions and order, in the background of which the elementary emotional truth is expressed. Sincerity of expression is confirmed by the escape from literal meanings, object associations which provoke painterly images. The works are the expression of pure internal suspense, resulting in the liberating drawing gesture and in this sense those peaceful expressions let the artist - with the power of much more aggressive manifestations - express his most profound ego to the others.

Andrzej Graczykowski attempts to be a careful observer of reality. The external form of a phenomenon becomes a starting point of intellectual or aesthetic considerations. A situation observed for example in a newspaper, a spectacular intriguing movement or gesture, the atmosphere accompanying a scene, supported by the artist's sensitivity are transferred into the language of shapes and colours. The creator tries to reveal what other people are not aware of, he presents what we are not able to notice in its external form ourselves. All essential things that happen in the image, often occur both in the sphere of composition and content - symbolically - 'above people's heads'.

Francis Bacon wanted his images to look the way 'as if a human being touched them, (...) leaving a trail of human presence and the memory of bygone events...' Being concerned with essential human issues, Andrzej Graczykowski certainly uses each of his paintings to express himself; with anxiety as well as with persistence he searches for his own truth. He tries to get deeper and deeper to express with the sufficient power what seems to be inexpressible.

Dariusz Leśnikowski

Transl. Elżbieta Rodzeń-Leśnikowska