Stanislaw J. Wos - Mala Gallery

Mala Gallery
8, Zamkowy Sq., Warsaw (Old Town)
January 2-26, 2001

Background and its picture: Stanislaw J. Wos


Stanislaw J. Wos, from exhibition in Mala Gallery, Warsaw, January 2001.

NE of the recent collective exhibitions in which Stanislaw J. Wos was participating was called "Penetration" *. This word quite accurately defines a problem appearing in his recent work . The starting point for this work was a painted picture background. Nine photographs presented by the artist are the result of penetration of succesive photographic takes of the same subject into painted and then photographed backgrounds. These backgrounds are of neutral character while the photographed subjects are a sky, a stone, a tree, a body, a cloud ...

The artist's intention was not to achieve some aesthetic form but to show mutual realtions, penetration and culminating of two semantic strata. The outcome of such efforts bring the resulted photographs to the limits of legibility. They become a kind of battlefield on which transitory and artificial struggles against the real (e.g. body, stone, tree...). The background impersonates darkness while the each of chosen subjects - the light. The background endows photograph with some static equilibrium while each subject testifies about potential movement in time and space.

All this is occuring in presence of three paintings that seen next to the photographs are amplifying impression of transitoriness of this experiment. The paintings - backgrounds are in a way struggling with recorded by photography subjects of physical existence. The results of this struggle are not decided definitely. Sometimes the background emerges to the surface, sometimes a particular subject prevails.

This struggle may be referred to Manichaean principle of existence i.e. the centuries-long competition between darkness and light. Thus this work is a kind of symbolic experiment carried out with simple elements and based upon this philosophical and religious principle of mutual penetration and overcoming of two elements: the light that impersonates the right and the darkness that is expression of evil.

In this context this photographer's and painter's interpretation of the problem in the recent works of Stanislaw J. Wos seems to be suggestion that is interesting and worth of consideration.

Marek Grygiel

*"Penetration" - a collective exhibition of Polish photography presented during the Month of Photography in Bratislava, November 2000.

Stanislaw J. Wos, from exhibition in Mala Gallery, Warsaw, January 2001.

Stanislaw J. Wos, from exhibition in Mala Gallery, Warsaw, January 2001.

Stanislaw J. Wos in Mala Gallery, January 2nd, 2001. Photo by W. Gorlewski/GW

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