Landscape, place, point

                    Landscape, monotype, stencil, acrylic / paper, 2006/7, 75x110 cm         

Abstract pictures, dynamically painted by Elżbieta Kardamasz Cieszyńska attract the sight, almost hypnotize, both with their form and colour, as well as clearly felt rhythm. Sometimes the rhythm consists in two colour concentric rings, while in other compositions there are exuberant “stripes” of vivid colours and thick texture running across the canvas. In spite of various methods of painting, and different ways of composing, both provoke similar associations. They remind ripples on water, or spreading sound, magnetic or warm waves – although of different physical character and energetic structure always having one common feature: necessity of having a starting point, beginning, source of their emanation. It seems however that those waves or energies described by scientists are not the topic of the artist's deliberations. She uses but associations with them, with the form of graphs showing the vibration amplitudes, and uses them as analogies thus shifting them to deliberations of emotional, psychical and spiritual topics. Because what she analyses artistically is an abstract point, a place of beginning, point where everything starts, from where come out life waves, thought waves, emotion waves, all sorts of waves, a point where things, events, situations are being born.

In the beginning was the Word... - this Gospel phrase comes inevitably to one's mind. The truth of this statement can be found also in the form of some works by Elżbieta Kardamasz-Cieszyńska. A word, it means a thought, cold as the intellect is, emotionless, well-ordered. The canvases with almost symmetrical compositions and clearly marked, usually red, central element, a starting point, painted smoothly and calmly. The form is well-thought-out and well balanced despite all its irregularities. The flat areas of basic colours make regular, logical rings.

Other pictures have been painted totally differently: violent, exuberant shapes of basic forms as if modelled out of thick paints and recalling an eruption, explosion.

In the beginning was the Word...

And then the life came: submitted to flowing and passing, to the rules of matter moving constantly and ceaselessly, the life ruled not by thoughts only but by emotions and accidents, too – obstacles disturbing theoretically ideal plans. Maybe the artist tells the stories just about them while drawing with thick paint a rhythmical amplitude of emotional, colourful gestures across the canvas? Maybe she just reacts to them joining strong red, yellow and orange dyes in such a magma, rubbing into it with rhythmical brush strokes stripes of green and blue? Maybe she puts them in order with the help of well-thought-out chill of regular stripes of shadows of quiet background's colours?

Maybe yes, maybe no... The expression of thus understood abstraction only touches the problems, make us aware that there are no clear answers and solutions.

At least one thing is clear: waves of thoughts and associations whose starting point are pictures by Elżbieta Kardamasz-Cieszyńska reach our feelings and emotions, also those ones dealing with the most fundamental problems of human existence, connected both with spirit and matter. With the beginning and with the end...

Stanislawa Zacharko

art. Critic, curator of BWA Gallery in Kielce

text from catalogue “Landscape, place, point”, European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium – September 2007

          Landscape, monotype, stencil, acrylic / paper, 2006/7, 3x (110x75) cm

Colorful Games of Ela Cieszynska

            Diverse are the paths of the contemporary art. Some artists persistently look for a new form and means of expression so they always experiment; for others a radical negation of traditional art of the '60s has become the main goal. Their para-artistic actions, done with the use of different media, could rightfully be called a practical philosophy, forms of social activity or meta-criticism whose subject is the state of contemporary cultural output of humanity. There is still, however, a large number of artists faithful to the traditional ethos of art, those who do not give up classical fields: painting, sculpture, drawing or graphics.

One thing which can be seen in the works of young artists and which I have followed with no small astonishment is the return to the trends from the beginnings of the 20th century. Especially those which had presupposed revolutionary avant-garde like: cubism, fauvism, and expressionism. Although, there are still traditionalists who go even further back into the past, and follow such trends as symbolism, romanticism, baroque and even the Quattro cento. What these opposite and sometimes antagonistic attitudes in contemporary art have in common is self-consciousness that accompanies artistic practice. Contemporary artist can practically draw from any existing traditional art forms (not only western), and choose any language of plastic expression. But, even if he does it only for himself, he has to justify his choice. In other words, he has to know not only what he is doing, but also why he is doing it this and not the other way. It could be that this distinct paraphrasing of old motifs and styles is a way of meditating the most important rules of plastic art set by such artists like Egon Schiele, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Wasyl Kandyñski, Kazimierz Malewicz, Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian and others.

Colorful, almost oriental splendor of the Przemyśl artist Elżbieta Kardamasz Cieszyñska, her liking for still nature and landscape, and her characteristic simplifications of forms bring to mind the works of the fauvists. They were the first to clearly separate art from nature. According to them painting was, most of all, an arrangement of shapes and a sophisticated  play of colors. Elżbieta Kardamasz Cieszyñska creates cycles of still nature which are, for example, variations on redness. She examines ways of matching the leading color with other colors and the relation of different shapes written into the composition. This way one can distinguish in her art the "blue" works which include a group of "blue-green-orange'" with great Matissean gold fish and the composition with a red cat called Jagoda.

The artist seems to be interested in the spatial relation of colors and forms. She starts from a fauvist rule of emphasizing two-dimensionality of the surface and its uniformity. That's how she creates sophisticated, almost abstract compositions of one object (triptych Plum, Lemon, Orange) and rhythmic arrangements of stylish flowers (cycle Compositions of Flowers and Compositions) Like the Fauvists, the painter in contrast to the postimpressionists prefers oriental colors - noisy, garish and very intense. She also prefers synthesis over the analysis; paints with wide strokes of the brush and covers large areas of the surface with shades of the same color. Her works are simply spectacular. The fauvists were known for their optimism, ecstatic joy and approval for all forms of existence but also modesty and the artist's withdrawal from his work which was so different from extreme subjectivisms of Expressionists and sectarian pride of the Cubists and Abstractionists. Artistic creations of Elżbieta Kardamasz come from the similar to the Fauvists' positive attitude the world, people and art.

Dr Magdalena Rabizo-Birek

Art. Critic

text from catalogue "Elzbieta Kardamasz Cieszynska - painting" (Hommage a Henri Matisse), Gallery of Contemporary Arts in Przemysl, 2005 

                                                  

Penetration

Penetration

The program aims is to create on a surface a symbolic primal space, an autonomous landscape within the landscape which is not an illusory image, an illusion of a material world but a suggestion and provocation to find a different dimension, create a tension between a spectator with his entire experience and knowledge and a symbolic image of the entire sphere of the unnamed.

Recurring symbol of a spiral and sometimes a circle is a sign of opening/closing, a sign of a conventional limitless space and its intertwining with time. Primary question here is the question of the beginning, the point of departure (and return?) as well as the search for an answer within the limits of the means of artistic expression.

Using painting and stencil mark means in making the project is for me an experience of an intensive contact with that, which is hidden and unnamed.

Works are painted with acrylic on paper, with the use of a paper-made template prepared individually for each work. Outlines of each stain are an edge of torn paper.
               Ela Cieszynska