Malevich: Reactivation
By Slawomir Marzec
Malevich`s Square(s) unquestionably constitutes a turning point in the history of contemporary art, being a kind of an archetype, or an idiom, still resisting one- valued qualifications. They can be closed neither in the vapours of cosmic mysticism, theosophy, socio/biography nor aesthetics. Maybe it is just the call to esteem "empty" places, situations etc. that constitutes its most significant force.
Our present-day, instantly changing world manifests two main attitudes to the past, the strategy of forgetfulness and incessant reinterpretation. The first one, being simpler, is common and prevailing. However, the reinterpretation cases extreme field of possibilities – from creation of new identity (as for example Alexander Brener attacking with spray Malevitsch`s painting as the icon of… commerce), through vivid criticism to dialogue. How would the Square look like today as created by a contemporary artist? Can nowadays varieties (not variety) consist of not only liquidness, indefiniteness, but also moments, situations of absoluteness? There are many spheres, which are touchable only by absoluteness (understood as full concentration, care, or obligation – like solidarity with
other people).
Although installations and objects can be found in the show, the broadly comprehended painting, or rather the image predominate. It was fascinating to recognize the echo of the Square in the works of contemporary artists: an absent square, the memory of which was rendered by the blackish/white mist in the work of Stefan Gierowski, as well as Wojciech Lazarczyk`s admirable, multi-dimensional square images, which depart from illusion or symbolism. Monumental in its simplicity, Jerzy Kalucki`s painting refers to the Orthodox iconography and architecture. "Squareness" provides a frame of the personal confessions of Ewa Zarzycka`s visual poetry. Then the "American throwaway-ness" of
Krzysztof Zarebski`s foil square packaging newspaper scraps and Marek Chlanda`s specific repetition of the Square enliven our percept.
Malevich is associated not only with Suprematism, but also with poetry (lately discovered) – dramatically pompous and egocentric: "I made the abyss my breath…" This rhetoric rather embarrasses us. Us, who got reconciled with the thought that today’s greatness does not depend so much on our endeavours to instantiate the absoluteness, but rather (which is equally futile) on reducing our foolishness. So it is not astonishing that also ironical works are presented in the show, like Jaroslaw Modzelewski`s painting, where the black square constitutes the strange accidental background of an underwear drying on a string. Obviously, few artists tried to wriggle out of the theme just by an anecdote or a joke. And besides, as Zbigniew Warpechowski (the curator) insisted, the
exhibition is meant to remind of Malevich’s Polish roots.
By and large, the last century was marked by the stigma of absence, lack of presence (truth, justice, right etc.). Initial, utopian prorogation of the full, real presence was replaced later by the (theoretical) annihilation of the presence at all. Art answered by the aesthetics of loftiness comprehended as shapelessness, non-objectiveness, roundlessness, idiomacy or simulacrum. In spite of all the transformations, Malevich`s art still reminds of our basic limitations, our basic polarity: being stretched between the absolute dissipation of human ego and the absolute of its confirmation, consecration. And these two contradictory perspectives – mysteriously and paradoxically — get unified in the Square(s).
