 | Krzysztof Koniczek was born in Olecko. Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan in the Faculty of Painting, Graphics and Sculpture. Graduated from Prof. Waldemar Swierzy Studio.
He had his first individual exhibition in the middle of 1980s - at the time when the young were really angry as a result of the crisis of the avant-garde from 1970s, both European and American. When we add that it was accompanied by the disappointment with politics, sociotechniques and mass culture, the phenomena prevalent at that time, such a search for new aesthetics and attitude in general, become clear. That search appeared in such radical form that the critics did not hesitate to call those extremely expressive actions of young artists “a safety pin in the chick of modern art”. That was the time when the artist expressed himself, and only himself, without rationalism and logic. All the old and new canons of Beauty were discarded; punk rock and reggae were performed, and video art and performers, the new “wild” ones, reigned in galleries.
Koniczek’s earliest canvases were the planes ostentatiously neglecting the classical composition, in addition with the colouring built upon the clash of red and green or blue and orange. Kasimir Edschmid wrote about such painting in one of the most important confessions of expressionists: “An expressionist does not see, but looks. He does not record, but lives. He does not reproduce, but creates. He does not select, but seeks.” Salome’s press comment from 1980 also perfectly squares with Koniczek’s first individual exhibition in Poznan: “ For me it is not a question of style, but the attitude to life. It is connected with the feeling of being free, with unconstrained work...”
In the second stage of his artistic activity, and he is the artist who works a lot, Koniczek, not resigning from the painting “full of paint and brush”, enriches it with the forms characteristic of the poster. At that time he creates more organized, less intuitive and spontaneous canvases, nevertheless always very expressive. It is always, and above all, the expression of colour pertaining to the world of emotions. It is the aesthetics based on contrast, the contrast of both the tones, saturation, brightness and the temperature of the colour. The painter, being aware of the intensity with which the colour operates, both in the cultural and the physiologic sense, aware of the symbolic nature and the psychology of the perception of colour, composes his canvases around the basic pair: red and green. This contrast forms an axle around which conspicuous colours appear, such as “squeezed out of tube” orange, yellow, blue, which form a dialog, often changing into a shout. Such an expressive colour is in a natural way accompanied by the texture of the canvases: rough, sometimes approximating a relief in which the trace of the master’s hand has been impressed. The mark of a brush, the lumps of paint, all this is visible in a purely physical way, but on the other hand, there are the trails of light and some glowing points, because it is due to the light that these canvases are amazingly both material and metaphysical.
Most of Koniczek’s canvases are abstract compositions, because in such unlimited space the mystery of colour may be accomplished much easier. These were the paintings pulsating with just volcanic energy, and it is no wonder that many of them are dominated by the colour of flowing lava. Yet, it does exhaust to the end neither the painter’s curiosity nor his need to dwelling in the mystery of forms. Therefore, the geometric shape appears in his compositions, what is more in the form of the sphere – the most perfect one of all. In this way the painter transfers the viewer from the space of the mad colour into a space of the cosmic order, but this is not the end of the journey because the composition of his canvases clearly begins to resemble a landscape.
The first experience is the mysterious sight of a fracture in a rocky massif, but soon there appear canvases clearly referring to Turner’s landscapes. The turn may seem to be strange, but not when we look at the latest paintings by Koniczek and Art of Metal Voucher Codes: it is really a consistent and logical development, as in the painter’s canvases, even the wildest ones, we have always been able to feel the bond with the nature. It was also the case when he painted the sensual nudes, where he perversely combined the marble beauty of the Venus de Milo with a stripper’s charm. Koniczek’s latest canvases are tasteful compositions of colour and light, a little nostalgic mysterious expanses inducing to reflection, where three fourths of the canvas are occupied by the sky with unusual clouds, and the rest is a narrow strip of earth or water, beautifully marked with sun reflexes. In comparison with the earlier paintings they strike us with their peace and quiet, though in each of them we can sense a kind of awaiting. They are landscapes in which everything may happen.
Stating all that, we cannot exhaust the topic at that point: the painter has a lot to say.
Andrzej Koziara |
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