Mala Gallery, Warsaw,
8, Zamkowy Sq.
October 5-29, 1999
Slawomir Kubala- Mala Gallery ZPAF-CSW, October 1999.
The fact that contemporary artists pay more and more attention to problems of mutual penetration of different media does not surprise us anymore. It is particularly true in case of visual arts where we may observe interesting relations e.g. between spatial forms and an image recorded on photographic film.
For some years Slawomir Kubala has been trying to combine traditional techniques of printing arts and painting with photography. He does it not only in area of aesthetic feelings. He tries to penetrate mystery of corporality of human being, to show human silhouette obliterating its shape, blurring contours of individual figures, making generalizations which obliterate gender features, personal lineaments and peculiarities of individual persons. Hard to recognize protagonists of his photographs allow him to draw more general conclusions as to human condition and our place in the world which becomes more and more unfriendly and anonymous. These photographic pictures, as we may call them, separate what is real, i.e. human body from what is invisible, from a certain mysterious aura and special mood created by the artist.
The photographs of Slawomir Kubala create definite mood - they were taken in scenery of thriller movies, underground or in caves covered with cobwebs thus suggesting in a symbolic way a process of alienation and loneliness of human being, our confusion and kind of emptiness that surrounds us.
Marek Grygiel
Slawomir Kubala- Mala Gallery ZPAF-CSW, October 1999.
Slawomir Kubala- Mala Gallery ZPAF-CSW, October 1999.
So we are looking at Slawomir Kubala photographs, we are penetrating layer of resin - we are melting it with our very sight - and then we stop at exposed paper reinforced / supported by some plank. We are looking at photographs situated in the place between: which separates (though only here, between these words) a matter of resin from a matter of wood and at the same time connects them together through a simulation of painterly representations created on planks once ago. This paper, exposed by the matter of things and bodies embraces their ambivalent incarnations estabilishing the substratum for spiritual and sensual experiences which take place beyond perception and our understanding of the world. So even if we look at the Slawomir Kubala photographs we can see only as much as weak emanation of light, which symbolizes this area of the unconscious upon which man has taken control, enabled us to see in different areas of the temporal: everything else is happening in the sphere of feelings which are hard to visualize. Extended in the inner space of photographs mouldy structures, mildew, cobwebs, wood joints and veils of spider's webs make substratum for this what is male, female and androgynous, substratum which sometimes constitutes a clear background for these figures / bodies or interweaves with their rendered unreal and stratified physical nature - levelling thus the limits of the matter. We are watching the bodies in their sacrificial humility, the bodies which offer themselves to the clemency of death, which take us into depths of what is indestroyable. So we are exposed to emission of ambivlent symbols which describe phenomenon of the world and this sphere of the world which symbolizes insight into other reality. The photographs of Slawomir Kubala do unmask something that is hidden behind more or less substantiated matters and bodies, transparent cobwebs or dense thicket. Nevertheless they are tight enough to screen what is the most important.
Maria Brewinska
Slawomir Kubala - Mala Gallery ZPAF-CSW, October 1999.
Slawomir Kubala
born 1971 in Lodz
1992-1997 has studied in the Strzeminski Academy od Fine Arts, Lodz, Graduated from the Workshop of Plate Printing Techniques of prof. Andrzej Kabala.
Solo exhibitions:
1996 - "Slawomir Kubala?!", Galeria FF, Lodz
Group exhibitions:
1996
Biuro Wystaw Artystycznych, Plock
Muzeum Artystow, Lodz1997
Galeria TPSP "Palacyk" im. Tadeusza Kulisiewicza
"Fotografia 97", Fundacja Turleja, Palac Sztuki, Krakow
XXVII Konfrontacje Fotograficzne, Gorzow Wielkopolski
The exhibition of works by students and graduates of the Academy of Fine Arts, Muzeum Historii Miasta Lodzi1998
"Fotografia 98", Fundacja Turleja, Palac pod Baranami, Krakow
Ist Biennial of Polish Photography, Galeria Arsenal, Poznan
Galeria Manhattan, Lodz1999
Galeria Manhattan, Lodz
Galeria Bielska BWA, Bielsko-Biala
S. Kubala's exhibition was opened in Mala Gallery in Warsaw on October 5, 1999. From right: Slawomir Kubala, Konrad Kuzyszyn, Marek Grygiel. Fot. Piotr Kubat/GW
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