Exhibition - Joanna Wiszniewska

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	Joanna Wiszniewska - Domańska » GRAPHICS, DRAWINGS, OBJECTS Labyrinths and flying fish Joanna studied at High School of Fine Arts in Łódź in the studio headed by professor Stanisław Fijałkowski. Professor taught his students precision of form and discipline of composition. No wonder Joanna was his favourite student. For many years she has been creating a poetic mysterious world in her drawings and graphics, using a subtle and pure line. In a desert-like space, divided - like children like doing it - into the ground and the sky, one amazing object drew our attention: a pyramid, labyrinth, the cylindrical Tower of Babel or a large open book. Sometimes there were also the ideal shapes of spheres and cubes, fish and kites flying in the sky. Lonely figures with their backs turned on the audience were deeply contemplating the astonishing landscapes and objects. At one moment Joanna was tempted to transfer her imagined world from a flat piece of paper into the three-dimensional reality. She did not want to resign from the language of drawing, yet she wished to find new means of expression for it. She decided to create 'drawings in space', as she defines them. She made original objects which, by means of the collage technique, she diligently covered with lined paper cut into squares. They have become props in her unusual 'suitcase theatre'... Magic suitcases Joanna's Magiczne walizki (Magic Suitcases) appeared in the mid 1990s. When they are closed it is difficult to guess their unusual contents, like multi-storey buildings in Miasto (The City), Statek na pełnym morzu (A Ship at Sea) or Pejzaż z ryb (A Landscape With Fish). In one of the suitcases we can see a bride in a dress made of blotting paper who is running away from her own wedding, in another one Mona Lisa is looking out of the window in a tenement house in front of which Franz Kafka is walking to and fro, in yet another rows of miniature chairs are awaiting the participants of Wieczór poetycki (Poetry Night) ... Kinga Kawalerowicz A Safe Labyrinth How to find a compromise between a journey which means motion and settling down or stillness? In other words, how to find a compromise between the common and humane need for risk and the need for the feeling of safety? Aren't these the questions raised by Joanna Wiszniewska - Doma?ska's painting world? The texture of this world comprises the cobweb of subtle lines, each drawn separately by the artist's hand, thus it is diligently woven from a spider's thread, colours and paper, fragile but difficult to tear. That is another paradox of this world, its fragility and firmness . Even though this world is closed, there is a way out. Anyway is it necessary to leave it, if it is so beautiful and harmonious in here? Is it safe then? Isn't it ultimately certain? On the other hand, can an entirely safe world be exciting? Man in front of a labyrinth, however, does not seem to be sentenced, is not compelled to enter the labyrinth, like the one in front of a library is not compelled to read a book. Thus there is a kind of informal naturalness of this situation with no way out. A lion sits in the arena, a man stands, and the background for this scene is just the infinite earth and sky. The lion has a face and the man does not. Both of them, however, do not seem to be each other's or the arena's prisoners so a leash or a chain do not make them captives but link them together in a good sense of this word. What strikes us in Joanna's newest world is the fact that all the people are turned away. Yet we do not have an impression that they turned back on us with disgust or fear. Therefore we are not anxious about the moment which is not certain to come, namely when they decide to reveal their faces. We are likely to be amazed though - they have our faces. The world is oversimplified, yet to our surprise, this oversimplification takes many shapes and colours, and being moderate here never means being thrifty. It is a conspicuous example of how affluent poverty can be. Everything is reduced to what is necessary to show metaphysics of life as well as its beauty. In these drawings and gouaches there is a reflection, nostalgia, a delicate draught of sorrow, but there is neither pessimism nor despair. The power of this world is in its moderateness and tranquillity, both in form and in colours. The characters are lonely, a bit lost but safe. As if they knew that what is real is necessary. This art can not be experienced without understanding poetry. In these pictures-metaphors there is an element of surrealism, so there is nothing weird about a flying fish led on an aero-lead by a man and a huge bird feather like a cloud over a head of a passer-by. Yet this is a moderate surrealism, far from any will to shock, and a phenomenon of daub which usually endangers this stylistics never endangers the artist herself. How is it possible that this world with no way out, the world of a labyrinth, a library, a chess square which talks to the horizon is not dangerous? Why is this land of a fairy-tale, let us call it a metaphysical fairy-tale, never dangerous to us? Perhaps because it takes so much from the world of a child and is mature at the same time, and this maturity comes from self-confidence. It also guarantees genuine art, where colour, line, composition sum up into what is called beauty, which unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately can not be defined. The poems which accompany the paintings confirm this feeling of confidence, confidence 'despite everything'. The beginning of 'Miasto biblioteki' (The City of the Library) is read as follows: 'Wiedzia?, ?e tu znajdzie to, czego tak d?ugo szuka?'.(He knew he could find here what he had been looking for so long). Even if under the mild surface there is a delicate sorrow and anxiety, mildness and harmony of colours calm us down. There is still another kind of harmony - the impact of this painting on the conscious and subconscious turning it into art which I dare call psychotherapeutic. Still lifes open a new cycle, which might be the beginning of a way, but nobody knows where it goes. The simplest answer would be that it goes to a child's room. These paintings, however, will look equally good in a businessman's office and a writer's studio. This world awakes a child in an adult person and an adult in a child. Objects from a toy box, yet the one from the previous epoch, encounter the chess castle and the labyrinth which is well-known from the artist's other works. The drawing of a man in front of a pile of suitcases promises a journey, yet it will not be a typical journey. The suitcase installations mean transferring this art into a new dimension. They remind us that motion is relative. It is not the suitcase which moves around the world, it is the world that comes to the suitcase, or perhaps they encounter in a point. The suitcase is a symbol of a journey, motion, a library symbolises settling down. Both the library and the suitcase are significant requisites of this simplified yet aesthetically generous world. Let us come back to our fundamental question - how to compromise between a journey which means motion and settling down or stillness? How to compromise between the need for risk and the need for safety? As a matter of fact these are basic questions concerning the paradox of human condition. Joanna Wiszniewska-Doma?ska's art seems to reveal this paradox. And to find a compromise. Tomasz Jastrun Dariusz Leśnikowski Translated by Elżbieta Rodzeń-Leśnikowska

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