Exhibition, Waldemar Mazurek

Personal odds and ends / Waldemar Mazurek

Tytuł

12 December 2019

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Interview conducted during the exhibition by Magda Chylak.

Tell us about the current exhibition you’re preparing for Gallery K&K.

It will be a retrospective of sculptures from the last several years of my work, mainly featuring classical sculpture. There will be small metal works, bronze and aluminum casts, and one or two larger stone sculptures. I’ll present a dozen or so works related to people and nature, without going too far into abstraction.

I understand that the main subject of your work is the human being placed in various contexts.

Yes, although lately I’ve been absorbed by the question of how people are entangled with technology. That’s where the idea for new subjects I’ve called “dehumans” came from. I’m interested in people and their surroundings. I feel that the world is becoming dehumanized, and that people are increasingly being consumed by technology and information. One small device, like a smartphone, has completely changed the way people function. I belong to a generation that remembers life before mobile phones. Technological progress is great in some ways, but very dangerous in others.

Changes always give rise to some concerns.

They can be dangerous, though they don’t have to be. There’s also the question of whether technology really makes us happy. In theory, it’s supposed to serve us. I’m reminded of something a Russian once said: that the greatest sin of our time is that people can’t learn to restrain themselves.

There’s a trend now toward minimalism, reducing the number of things in our lives, escaping the cities, surrounding ourselves with nature, and sustainable development.

Yes, and those are very positive trends. Moving away from “monkey-like” consumerism, that greed and desire to possess, and also from the pace of life.

So this exhibition will still be very “human”?

Yes, it will be very human. It will be a survey of the last few years. Lately I’ve made a lot of abstract sculptures while preparing a new series of “dehumans.” For various reasons, including the art market and the saleability of works, I’m returning to small, classical sculptural forms. But I don’t want to say too much about my new projects; I’d rather just make them.

Maybe that’s wise. I have a question that’s particularly relevant to sculpture, about choosing a material to suit a subject and what you want to convey. What is the connection? It’s obviously not accidental.

You can see it especially clearly with stone. Every stone has its own character, its own mood. Pure white marble is completely different from black granite or brown fieldstone granite. Marble is a classical, delicate stone, associated with antiquity. Granite, on the other hand, has a brutal strength to it—you could say a dark power. Stone has a soul.

With metals, other things come into play. Metal is more durable, and you can create very interesting structures with it and make use of its specific technical properties—for example, the fact that metal doesn’t need a large support point, which makes it possible to create a more intricate, lightweight structure. With stone, the form has to be more compact by necessity; you can’t weaken it, or it will simply fall apart. If the form is meant to be openwork and fleeting, stone isn’t suitable. Stone lends itself to blocks and solid, simple forms.

I have enormous respect for the old sculptors who carved delicate, intricate details in stone. We have to remember that this meant months of work with simple tools; there were no diamond grinders, after all. I’ve gone back to working by hand myself, though, because it’s a more attentive and sensitive process. With stone, you can’t cheat or speed anything up, and working out a form by hand gives you the chance to become more attuned to the material.

The use of color in sculpture is also significant.

Color completes the sculpture. I use patina, which I apply to the sculpture after heating it. This makes it possible to achieve painterly effects—depending on the color and intensity of the patina, it gives the sculpture a particular mood.

I’d like to ask you about the relationship between larger sculptural projects—I mean large works in stone—and architecture. Are there joint ventures or architectural projects in which sculpture is taken into account?

It’s a great initiative, but it’s not very common in Poland. A huge number of new buildings are being constructed with very little art in them, really. These are multimillion-dollar investments, and sculptures wouldn’t noticeably burden their budgets, but they would give them a distinctive character. Many buildings look very similar, even though they were designed by different architects.

I understand it’s not common practice to incorporate art into building designs or other architectural solutions?

I don’t think investors yet appreciate the opportunity to enrich a place and give it character. This applies not only to sculpture, but to paintings as well.

Do you think this is something specific to Poland, or is it generally the case? My theory is that there’s a certain mindset in Poland that art is inaccessible, associated with something very expensive and a kind of luxury—that it’s easier to buy an expensive pot than an inexpensive painting.

Indeed, there isn’t that kind of culture. It probably stems from the fact that we were a poor country for so many years, and our basic needs still haven’t been met. Developers build similar-looking projects without considering the role art could play in making them more varied and distinctive. It would be a great thing for everyone, not just artists.

A sculpture in an open urban space, like a park, works quite differently from one placed in a gallery. It comes alive as the light changes and through the weather; it also comes alive when someone approaches and touches it.

I’ve created works just like that, where what you’re talking about works really well—for example,the Eagle in Survivors’ Park in Łódź. It’s a park commemorating the people who lived through the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, which existed during the Second World War,or the fountain I made by the TVP building in Warsaw.

Sculpture could be a feature of many housing estates. And it doesn’t have to be sculpture alone—mosaics, too.

Bas-relief and mosaic in architecture make me think very much of Socialist Realism. In sculpture, you had those mighty caryatids, as if they’d just climbed off a tractor.

Of course, the aims were propaganda, but generally speaking, artists were better off then; they were needed. The political system was what it was, but artists received commissions from the authorities of the time.

And how do you view public commissions today?

They’re really quite rare. It just doesn’t happen. It’s mainly foundations, associations, and community fundraisers that deal with this; sometimes local authorities commission something, but there’s no comparison. Communism wasn’t my favorite political system, but artists had work.

So we should appeal to architects to include ideas like these in their designs, and to developers to budget for them appropriately.

I don’t know whether an appeal like that would achieve anything, but perhaps we really do need to talk about it.

Thank you for the conversation.