Nothing will be the same any longer

First the installation with clothes hung in space, airing in the wind – garments that are starched, yet moved by a gust of air before. Then some specific compositions – Sekretniki along with a series of collages whose components are designed according to a private algorithm of memory. There follow fabrics composed of untypical ‘fibres’, such as spines of books read some time ago. And of course ‘things to wear’ – simple, modest and organic; their biological tissue can be seen in subtle decorative motives, in the nerve system of stiches, in the selected colours of fabrics in mobile forms. All of these are Alina Szyszko’s works.

These various manifestations of expression are permeated by a common mood. It could be defined as a sense of nostalgia which helps combine the present states of emotions with traces from the past.

Sekretniki – including encoded in an odd writing mystery hidden by the artist under the glass. Like ‘a secret’ (or ‘a view’, ‘little heaven’ or ‘an angel’ that used to be hidden under a thin layer of soil). Each of them exposes things that are intimate and close to one’s heart, which one would like to keep for ever. Today they evoke memories provoked by the form, texture, and colour. They are an echo of the world of wonders, the mysterious disturbing land of childhood. Anyway, we wonder if the ones made many years ago are still there, in the ground. We try to convince ourselves that even if they are left forgotten, despite our inconstancy, they are the ones which preserve memories we wished to stay eternal. The moments when we made them – for ourselves, in secret – were like rites of passage, equally significant as the moment when we felt ashamed of our naked body.

Flowers, feathers, sticks, coloured glasses. Today they are also their photos as well as scraps of newspapers, handwritten inscriptions – all of them can be found in the collages. They have one purpose: to preserve traces of the past, to keep them for us as we believe they will help revive bygone emotions.

We are not the only ones who create our private secrets. History is made of them too. The past puts together remnants of events, echoes of ideologies, personal keepsakes left by people. Revealing her fascinations, Alina Szyszko juxtaposes such traces, uses the plane to arrange compositions of images and texts which let us settle our individual experiences in the surrounding universal context. Some photos, press cuttings recall passions of other people, they touch mysteries of the past – today partly faded in our memory or hidden in the archives. All the collages, even the most intimate ones, and those historical arranged together give a picture of the whole. They also provide inspiration for further artistic expression.

Alina Szyszko takes great care to prepare each project. A thorough analysis which leads to visualisation including photos, sketches, philosophical reflections, often in the form of freehand notes precedes the creation of an appropriate fabric and an outfit design. That unique multilayer resource query allows her to create works which reflect the character of the source of inspiration – in the cut of the garment, in the stitching lines (visible, exposed, not hidden) creating tenseness in colouring, in the general character of the design (a uniform!). Material elements of this phase are significant not only because of the substantive content (the artist looks for inspiration through a variety of contexts: social-political, cultural ones – working them out with great precision), but also due to their formal values as various components of collage compositions.

Photos, sketches, handwritten remarks, drawing designs are in the background all the time, associated with one another they form the context for the presented projects – they are also exhibited autonomously as independent artistic existences; even a fabric happens to be not just a necessary element of the garment construction but an individual object; it leads its own life, establishing a dynamic relationship with the surroundings when exposed in space.

As far as the clothes go, ergonomics, care for functional values lead to astonishing charmingly simple ideas, such as construction elements of clothes ‘adjusted’ to the form of designers’ furniture or a book-handbag carried by means of a handle. Spare style of details and discreet colours draw attentions to their form, to the concept and emotions.

Some of these artworks (such as e.g. the ‘book’ fabric meaningfully preserving and reflecting the past) refer to the ideas of artists representing the trend arte povera as well as surrealists (ready made objects). The similar ideas make the ground for the conceptual still life consisting of glasses and ‘spilt’ (actually made of polymer) stains of wine. The memory of a meeting preserved in this way, ‘that’ atmosphere, silence and tense mood remind us of the similar in mood compositions of Little Dutch Masters creating paintings concerning the process of passing, paying attention to evanescence of things, and simultaneously being able to keep the memory of the intriguing moment. That aspect undoubtedly stood behind another installation mentioned at the beginning of this text. Clothes, looking as if people have just been taken out of them, hang on the line, tossed in the wind. At the bottom there are leaves swirling in the air, smoke of the bonfire soaring up into the sky. The artist created a material permanent expression of things that are transient and temporary, such as the wind or smoke, intangible phenomena like passing and memory.

Alina Szyszko’s compositions are free of ingratiation and pretence; they confirm the young artist’s great potential to develop. A lot of preliminary projects, still in the form of a sketch, patiently wait to be subject to her sensitivity and intuition.

Dariusz Leśnikowski

Transl. Elżbieta Rodzeń-Leśnikowska