The attitude represented by Dominika Hałas's creation is not widespread nowadays. To be precise we can even say that it is in a way old-fashioned. The creation refers us to the areas marked by intersecting streams of anxiety and mystery, and the man desires certainty and order so much, even if they are speculated.

The artist generates the world where unexpected juxtapositions of objects and phenomena function. They are a component of common experience, but their encounter occurs under very unusual circumstances. Specific associations attribute the familiar objects with new meanings, they become a source of metaphysical atmosphere. It is the beginning of created - deceptive and alluring - reality which is seemingly authentic as it originated from the use of conjuring means of expression. They stand up due to the depth of space and the chiaroscuro effect. We are aware of the fact that they are unreal imaginary spaces, nevertheless we stare at them as if they were landscapes we can recognize and interpret.

The compositions made by Dominika Hałas did not come into existence as an attempt to preserve on a canvas the free flow of thoughts and images. The components of the created world are linked by secret bonds, which are only well known to the artist herself, some mysterious meanings waft over them. Some of the motives recalled in the images derive from the artist's memory; they stand for signs of specific events or people. Thus if at this moment we should stress the connection of these works with surrealism, we should also add that they are not relations with its variety enticed by automatisms. It is rather a kind of metaphorical creation, the poetic one with some metaphysical shade, with dicreet allusiveness of objects and decorativeness of form. Relations between objects are not of real nature, thus they infect the audience with a kind of curiosity combined with anxiety. These feelings are strengthened by the principle of combining objects and phenomena in an image, the principle whose basic factors are antymonies and lability of values. In the nooks of the majestic classicizing architecture there are some traits of movement and sound. Despite this the world has been dominated by stillness and silence. A tram looks as if it stopped. Likewise the mysterious organic forms flowing down the walls. The sea will soon change into the ice floe. The atmosphere is filled with silence though there are some musical instruments in this world; however, they do not dare or they can not make any sound. The clock does not tick - time stopped.

Another area of artistic search Dominika Hałas is concerned with is a set of issues being in the range of interest of such artists as Adelbert Ames Jr., Max Escher, Oscar Reutersvärd or Zenon Kulpa. In their works - which often originate from mathematic inspirations - space forms are presented in a way contradictory to our sight experience, and the seemingly logical and proper arrangements of elements do not match one another. Artists confirm that this type of reality may exist only in the graphic approach. In Dominika Hałas's paintings we face the world where the relations of distance and depth are strangely distorted, and as a result they confuse and lie. The sense of directions, the division into a lower and an upper part, the distinction between external and internal parts of the space lose their traditional meaning here. Defining an impossible figure', Zenon Kulpa stated that it is a flat drawing giving an impression of three-dimensional object, whose space interpretation assumed by an observer is impossible to be worked out as it contains some visible contradictions.' In Dominika Hałas's canvases we are concerned with the impossible world'.

Although the creation of the young artist is surrealistic in its concept, it is characterised by classical approach as far as the means of expression are concerned. It means that it is also for her one of the ways of checking and improving her skills, along with studying and painting still lives or perfecting the academic drawing. It appears to be one of the manifestations of examining her personal and artistic awareness (hereby expanded by impulses coming from the unreal world) on the way to understanding her own vocation.

Dariusz Leśnikowski

Translated by Elżbieta Rodzeń-Leśnikowska