The ecological landscape

Marika Michalska’s artistic work consists of works created in a variety of techniques. Most of them, made from an array of different materials, tend towards abstraction. Although the other works are characterised by greater suggestiveness of means of expression, referring to some specific subject forms, and some of them appeal to the world of real representations in their title, most of them also belong to the realm of non-representational art.

Within the most spectacular cycle the artist creates relief works differentiated in their mood. Against the background of complex geometrical compositions, built of bands of colours, almost regular forms, rows of lines, there are certainly traditional motives such as e.g. landscape. Considering the works created by the young artist we can obviously use the term ”ecological landscape”, not only with regard to some genre references, but mostly because of the conceptual point of view taken here.

Marika Michalska uses plastic packages, caps, foil, waste paper – „reused” materials, those which are expressly associated with recycling. She joins them on the surface by means of glue, adhesive tape and strings. She combines them, like in fabric, taking advantage of “stiches” and “weaves”. She puts together elements of different colours, textures and types of surface. In these compositions the way of colour solutions is close to painting. To create the atmosphere, to make an impression of spaciousness, she not only incorporates subtle colour effects but also textures, differentiated thickness, transparency and glitter of particular layers. The image becomes spatial not only because of the applied means of plastic formation which suggest the depth, but most of all because The works are endowed with some features of sculptural compositions.

The works are characterised by discipline as well as simplicity in building structures and great care about coherence of materials and means of expression. They are originally decorative, which is quite surprising, when we take into account the character of selected materials. We are struck by purity and conciseness of the well-thoughtout compositions, apt relation between the size and arrangement of the work components, relevant juxtaposition of colours.

Artists seldom use their work to manifest so strongly their involvement in any kind of non-artistic issue; they sometimes take advantage of various – also found or reused materials – but they treat it as an element of their artistic search, an attempt to use new unique materials. The fact that recyclable materials appear in works does not imply the reflection of it in titles or even artists’ direct statements. Unlike the artist here who features her works with a kind of intervention message.

The works made in mixed media on canvas, drawings and graphics are more allusive. The source motives, reduced in the imagery layer to blurred forms juxtaposed with arrangements of lines, which originate from a painting gesture, due to the composition, colour and light reflect the character and atmosphere of real objects and phenomena. It seems that we discover familiar objects, situations and emotions in these images, the compositions become imaginary representations and equivalents of moods, some of them embody abstract notions.

The works mentioned above, though hardly suggestive, refer to the widely understood imagery associated with man. It is not an individual human being, with defined physical and psychic features. Both the silhouette and the elements of the context in which they appear are simplified. The surrounding reality is transformed and deprived of redundant details. It is more about presenting the condition of man in the contemporary world, most often anonymous, mingled with the crowd, fighting for his own space in life. The contours of his silhouette, sometimes scarcely tangible, emerge from the congestion of lines carefully drafted by means of a pencil or charcoal.

Works created by Marika Michalska are also featured with a kind of specific organic qualities. Their connections with nature result from similarity of works to compositions made in weaving techniques, the presence of quasi-fibres, their strands, as well as “patchwork” modules. Graphic and drawing works are dominated by a vivid organic line creating imagery forms and blurred, seemingly biological planes in paintings. The idea that makes up a pretext for the recycling compositions (the presence of nature in the background and the appeal concerning the need to protect it) is more direct and perceivable here. In the former works the organic character is preserved in the structure of the matter, in the latter it is reflected in the imagery layer.

Marika Michalska’s works evoke different interpretative contexts. The artist is open to a variety of emotions experienced by the audience. Her whole creation is undoubtedly characterised by the common area of interest: it is man and the environment where we function. She is concerned with the issue of man functioning together and next to other human beings, as well as in connection with other elements of nature. The young artist discovers the sense of existence in harmony with the world of Nature.

Dariusz Leśnikowski

Transl. Elżbieta Rodzeń-Leśnikowska