Graphic theory of relativity

Zdzisław Olejniczak’s works are recognizable; the artist has been working for a very long time within similar motifs and means of expression, and yet each successive print brings a surprise, stimulates the exercise of mind and eye. It makes us aware that the artist cleverly detaches us from our acquired habits of perceiving space, interpreting objects and constructing meanings.

One could say that the artist creates his own, speculated and very complex world. On the other hand, he references our common experiences, the basis of which are, among other things, our dreams and premonitions.

What is most astonishing is that the pictorial motifs themselves are in no way disturbing. They belong to an arsenal of forms and signs that we can easily recognize and interpret. The annoying surprise comes only when - following the author’s suggestions - we try to determine a logical path for our journey into the depths of the created image.

We realize that we are dealing with fiction, perfectly thought out and executed in a graphic form. Impossible to actually exist in reality. At first it becomes a source of impatience, then it causes uncertainty and confusion.

Zdzisław Olejniczak is in a constant search. Both in terms of the issues addressed and the technical aspects involved in their pictorial manifestation. For many years, the artist was associated with an oeuvre that included abstract works enriched, however, with allusive and even metaphorical elements. The space here is heterogeneous, the light builds up the credibility of the otherwise implausible solids. Pictorial motifs constitute a variety of forms, linked by networks of mysterious installations. The message is enhanced by geometric figures, numbers and letter signs placed on cubic forms. Their arrangement suggests depth that is illusory in essence. It evokes disturbances of space, surprising optical illusions. The artist provokes the viewer to undertake intellectual play, to solve logical puzzles, but also to formulate questions.

Not closing himself within the framework of already developed activities, Zdzisław Olejniczak gradually introduced noticeable changes in the shaping of the background and the mutual relations of pictorial motifs. The latter sometimes take on the form of signs isolated from the ground, the boundaries of the image are not delineated by hatching that fills the entire picture plane.

There are also wider borders that form the contours of objects. They more strongly accentuate the place occupied by a given motif in the image space, as well as the dimensions and proportions of individual solids. Their fragments also began to obtain a more decisive expressive character. The place of the planes marked by series of detailed hatchings, for example, is taken by uniformly coloured black or white squares.

Our imagination, assumed and well-established ways of perceiving and reflecting reality make us interpret these objects as components of the real world. The artist refers to the scientific rules necessary for constructing and interpreting reality, but at the same time talks about their relativism.

The questions posed by the artist today have deep justification. Modern scientific concepts are undermining - seemingly indisputable - beliefs grown on the basis of centuries of research and experience. The adoption of new paradigms of the construction of the universe captures imagination, the artist has to depict on a two-dimensional plane the essence of complex, multidimensional phenomena. How to show that an object functions in a dozen dimensions, or that a particle can exist at the same time in two different places? And how to come to terms with the fact that today works are made by artificial intelligence instead of the artist?

The most recent works by Zdzisław Olejniczak (especially the works from the series Carriers to Nothingness) are of a slightly different nature than before, representing to a greater extent an approach based in the area of pure visual arts. Undoubtedly, they come as a surprise to the viewer accustomed to the form of the artist’s previous statements. The works even more strongly expose the philosophical dimension of the artist’s search. They concern, for example, such a primordial issue as the mystery of the origins, understood both in general terms, as an ontological order, referred in science primarily to the question of the origin of the universe, the emergence of life and man, but also - narrowing down the problem - very calculatedly, to the relationship of the elements that build the work of art.

In artistic expression, especially in black and white graphics, as in the ontological generalization, darkness stands in opposition to light. Has the world emerged from darkness? Out of nothingness? These are among the questions relating to the issues that Zdzisław Olejniczak is trying to explore in his art today.

Can such questions be answered by drawing lines in the surface of the material with a chisel? A reflection on the relations of black and white means going back to the basics, an attempt to understand the interrelationship of light and darkness, the beginning and the aftermath, the phases of emergence and disappearance, primacy and dominance over what is subordinate. Does the black square on the plane of the print have a negative or positive aspect? The artist from Lodz creates a series of works that find their counterparts in “negative” variants. The artist reverses the situations that initiate the creation of prints. Reflections on the relationship between absence and presence can be illustrated in graphic art, for example, by linocuts, in which the image was created on the principle of the negative, exposing significant elements as bright motifs on a dark background.

Then the matrix appears in graphic considerations in double meaning - as a material source of the beginning - a tool through which the edition is created and the artist’s intention is realized - and in a symbolic sense, as a giver of light or darkness. It all depends on the approach of the artist, who can use the matrix differently from the typical function associated with the form of printing - intaglio or relief printing. In the case of many graphic methods, the matrix can be used in both roles.

7 A special aspect of the works created recently is the use of the procedure of sequentiality of images created from the same matrices. The artist juxtaposes them in various configurations, creating series of admittedly similar, but ultimately different works. In the individual prints, which can be treated as modules, there appear motifs similar in character, differing from each other mainly by a different combination of delicate lines, turned in different directions, enclosed within black or white squares. Their various arrangements are then characterized by a particular rhythmicity, caused by the heterogeneity of the same motifs at the level of secondary features. The set of matrices used can be a set that allows the creation of permutations of separate statements composed of different combinations of signs. The rules governing the act of creating utterances constitute the author’s original grammar of expression.

Modularity, variations, permutations. These notions refer us to the phenomenon of relativism, so obvious in the case of Zdzisław Olejniczak’s artwork. First of all, the relativism of space, but also relativity in terms of apprehending the nature of all processes, taking the shape of either cyclic returns or linearity, also the succession and sequence of their phases.
The artist not only poses new questions, he also looks for appropriate ways within the non-artistic means: technical, material ones, so as - by enriching the matrix - to authenticate in the image the apparent curves and protrusions of the surface, to suggest disturbances in the rhythm of parallel strands or sudden changes in their course, indicating, above all, the curving of the space of the image.

Once again it turns out that by operating with speculated components from the world of “cold” abstraction, one can create artworks which not only impress with the artist’s mastery of technical craftsmanship, stimulate participation in exploring non-reality, but also – with regard to its nature – they try to satisfy the feeling of the overwhelming lack of experiences of metaphysical nature.

Dariusz Leśnikowski

Translated by Elżbieta Rodzeń-Leśnikowska

Dariusz Leśnikowski




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