References

With Charles, we belong to...

Karol and I are among the college-bound graphic designers. Karol teaches
in Gdansk at the Academy of Fine Arts, I in Krakow. Environment
academic institutions in Poland cooperate and from time to time we meet at the
On the occasion of vernissages or major reviews of Polish graphic art, or at the
conferences. We are also bound by our favourite linocut technique. However, my
the search is mainly about lines and I work in black and white. Charles, on the other hand
is a master of colour. In Krakow, people talk about the Gdansk school of linocut
reductive. It is a technique used by artists, among others:
Janusz Akermann, Aleksandra Prusinowska, Magdalena Hanysz Stefańska
and of those known to me, from this university, also by Karol Lewalski. Briefly
It involves cutting out a layer of each colour and reflecting it onto paper.
Layer upon layer of sometimes a dozen colours, layers form the final
image. After the last print, the linoleum disappears or is to be discarded. This
A unique technique. It either comes out or it doesn't. Another layer changes
completely picture.
Each of these artists uses this difficult technique differently. I am
I have always been impressed by the graphics produced using this technique and find it very
difficult and requires patience.
Interestingly, Charles writes in his lyrics that he dreams of tranquillity and peace.
For that, his works are very diverse, but there are some that scream,
impose themselves with colour, irritate with a kind of exaggeration and fool the
a frenzy of colours. From these works beats the heat, beats the intensity of experiences
and temperament. In another series, Charles is different again. Large-format prints
sometimes cut with a fine stitch of dots, reflected in shades of white or
delicate pink, show us someone else. Is Charles a delicate,
pastel, almost feminine in his aesthetic sensibility? Is Charles a
a mad searcher of strong colours, sensations among naked posters,
playful women suspended in a car workshop?
The search for the self is evident in Charles' work. On this path of masculine
experience we see two worlds. Which one would Charles like to live in?
Then there is a series of prints that are subdued but expressive. In these works
pierces through with determination, but also with some search for harmony. Charles juxtaposes in
them large, strong in colour and form, abstract elements, sets them up as
the protagonists of the painting. He inserts them into a gentle, exclusive space
"American" interior design, then places the odd one alongside them,
small, colour-intensive objects that are intended to be a trace of the stay of these
elegant ladies smelling of Chanel No 5, or gentlemen in shirts from
Armani. White villas, the sound of waves, large windows and decor seemingly nonchalantly
scattered, small sculptural forms that were set up for hours,
to match the elegant interior. It is these works that I very much associate
with Salvador Dalí. His paintings seem like dreamy visions, yet very
looking good in the interiors of large white villas. There is in Dali's
A snobbish note. I can hear it in Charles as well. These are not graphics to small,
dark flats in blocks of flats. These are elegant, nonchalant creations to
the large and beautifully lit lounges of the seaside villas. Of course,
I have no idea if that was Charles' intention, but that's the feeling I got when I
I am looking at this series of graphic works, beautiful and painterly in their form.
Charles has a great sense of colour. I like those pastel, powdery colours of his
but also the bright and psychedelic ones.
Charles' two artist personalities, the one loving the workshop atmosphere
cars, which would probably be sterile clean at his place, only
smeared with grease on the cheek or the mechanic's white trousers. And the second
artistic personality, presumed by me, is an elegant, brilliantly
dressed, leaning against a sporty Aston Martin, beautifully scented, artist James,
who gazes out into the horizon of the sky set against the sea with a beautiful woman at his side,
who works in a beach hut and no one knows about his hobby because before
the world plays hardball.
Of course, this tale of mine about Charles is a fable inspired by his
creativity and the deeply hidden dreams he describes.
Writers always have to explain their crime stories. An artist doesn't have to.
The artist does what he wants. Artist, graphic designer Karol Lewalski cuts out his linolea
floor so that magical, colourful stories come out from under his chisel.
Charles is a dreamer still looking for himself and his dream house
On a dune. Charles reveals to us gently and slowly who he really is. Sam
By the way, maybe he will learn too?

Dr Marta Bożyk
Academy of Fine Arts Cracow

 

 

The light eyes of the heart...

The light eyes of the heart... or the becoming of images

We are used to thinking and saying in the art world that paintings 'make you think'. Paintings like people can indeed be impulses for thinking, experiencing and understanding the world. This is exactly what Karol Lewalski's paintings are, becoming signs of a rich life, visual symptoms of the colours of existence. Here before the viewer's eyes stretches a peculiar fullness of artistic form arising, I guess, from experiencing the artist's rich visual worlds. In the presented performances, it is precisely the richness of the fullness of the world that is experienced: it is not only looked at, but also admired, experienced and interpreted, and ultimately given artistic, and therefore refined and aesthetically cultured, expression. 

Karol Lewalski's paintings 'give food for thought' for two general reasons in particular. The first is because they are 'powerful' images. In the reflection that deals with thinking and writing about paintings, we speak of 'strong' paintings when we see that life directly 'thickens' in them. The measure of a "strong" image becomes its expressive power, its visual ability to reflect and present the inexhaustible wealth of visible human reality. There is so much real life in them, which multiplies, enriches and expands in meaning when artistically transformed, and also allows interpretation, besides making the viewer look at himself, see, discover and analyse;  and perhaps above all to love? One feels in these paintings the amazement of visibility, which is increasingly rare today. Some expression of the experience of seeing in this way is the simple reaction of reception, a sudden almost physiological reflex, a necessity even  an involuntary desire to tell someone else about them, someone who has not yet had the opportunity to see them or enjoy them; whether he could not saturate his senses with their  a sensitively created aesthetic.   For there is in these paintings everything that is most important for creativity: the freedom of seeing, the overlapping of sensations, the savouring of sensuality, even the silent admiration or pursuit of an ultimately unmatched visible human reality. And there is also noticeable here the artistic work on perceptual apprehension, the expression of everything that allows itself to be perceived, that tries to inspire the human gaze, that also goes beyond seeing, and that arises from the richness and vastness of existence - from nature in its broadest sense, through the human figure, especially the noteworthy fascination with female sexuality, and to attentiveness to what is elusive, what hides beneath the discreetly existing fabric of human corporeality, what is finally contained in the events of multidimensional presence and in the areas of human being between, and also with, others. 

This brings us to the second reason that makes these images thought-provoking or reflective. I refer at this point to their visual or expressive  truth. Regardless of whether one believes the contemporary cultural post-truth, it is always important in perception whether an artistic creation is true, i.e. convincing, coherent or even visually plausible. This oeuvre presents itself as such. Here I want to particularly emphasise its artistic truth by drawing attention to its formal coherence and chromatic, colourful authenticity. These two expressive and aesthetic qualities mean that they don't exist alongside our visible and worn realities, but rather create new realities, allowing us to look at ourselves with new eyes, altered by the artist and his paintings. Thanks to the artistic effort of the creator's thoughts, even new images of the world are created. We follow the image and its creator with our eyes, as it were, and at the same time we can see  "differently". Which is, after all, what art is all about. What we have here is a seemingly ordinary, but in effect extraordinary new creative mimicry: insight into what exists is transformed here into artistic intervention, and the artistic form creates a visible interpretation of reality. Figuration, keeping up with its fulfilment, transforms into abstraction, which in turn wants to complete and express everything that cannot be seen and what cannot be easily seen. Here is the living and artistically becoming world in its fullness, in a process of continuous creation.

The creator of these paintings does not want to reproduce a real existing reality, but above all wants to organise it in the image in such a way that it is visible in its non-obvious status and dynamic condition. As a result, what is obvious and has been seen many times becomes its desired opposite here - it is transformed into the unusual, the different, into some kind of attractive unveiling of existence. Stopped and re-created, the colours live their new true artistic life. They seem real, they convince our eyes and senses, although they are quite different from our everyday vision. For it is the creator of the paintings who has rearranged and organised them just for us. As if he wanted to say to us each time and in each new version: Look. Look how unusual, amazing, dynamic and multilayered our world is. Thus creating a new event especially for our use - a celebration of seeing, experiencing and understanding the world. Let us take a few  examples: The beachfront becomes here an extraordinary 'other' than in our usual vision of the place; or even such a common image as the view of the west, which here is transformed into a collage of the richness of life's shades; or, finally, the skirt in artistic transformation seems a captivating visual microcosm. And, seen hundreds of times, a walk with a dog reveals a literal visible fever of colours, forms and shapes, and an essentially expressed dynamic of seeing-perceiving-multiplying complexity of what can rarely impose itself on our eyes and senses in general.

 What else is perhaps worth emphasising? Well, one thing for sure -  The images presented were certainly created from the "eye and mind" of their creator, thus becoming visually rational, legible, and cognitively and expressively formally rich. I can emphatically emphasise this quality of the work in question, which is something I would like to see happen more often in my adventures as a critic.  In a word, I could confidently call these images re-flexive, or those that have a dual effect on perception:  on the one hand, appeal to thinking and re-thinking, and on the other hand, become artistic re-flexes These images are, in a way, unveilings of an expanded world, enriched precisely by the creative expression and content resulting from the richness of form. Such images have a duality valuable in their structure - they can be in fact both a thought about the world and the world itself, a world that is admittedly artificial, but nevertheless suggestive and aesthetically attractive, already living its life in the space of culture, allowing itself to be seen again and again and, most importantly, to be constantly re-interpreted, expanding our everyday world with an artistic worthy of attention.  dimension. 

We need for a full democratic life reflective images that expand our existence, triggering a conversation, a meeting or an exchange of ideas - or even an argument over images. Karol Lewalski's paintings can successfully fulfil all these needs socially, having a valuable potential for discussion; they reveal something else that makes them all the more appealing to life - they combine reflection with emotion, with what I would call perhaps risky  the seeing eyes of the heart? The classical author wrote literally about the "enlightened eyes of the heart". In addition to the "eye of the mind" one can see in them the "eyes of the heart"  and a kind of visual ardour, which makes their long social existence all the more promising. I would like them, then, to convince visually, artistically and expressively other eyes, minds and hearts; being able to be mirrors of our realities; at the same time becoming precisely  linocut images of the colours of life.               And that, at the same time, they generate much-needed new ways of seeing the world, which, thanks to them, is still - hopefully not becoming - obvious.  After all, there is still alive in at least some of us, despite the changes and the networked development of an ever faster world, a true universal conviction to want to see and understand the world through the prism of thought-provoking - artistic images. Such, after all, are the long-established roots of our culture, which has lasted and will continue to come alive thanks to artistically/cognitively obliging images. 

I believe Karol Lewalski's pictorial realities not only because they are reflective, but also because they are visually compelling - one might say artistically persuasive. No, they are too little and overly intellectually expressed. I rarely write this as a critic - I like them, and modestly so to say. The rest, for various reasons, if only critical distance, must remain silent.Zb

If at my door...

If a pedlar devil knocked on my door and offered my youth,
I would have closed the door in his face with an eloquent gesture. Reluctance
to be young does not spring from the fear that this process also involves
with the 'rejuvenation' of the brain, but rather from an awareness of what is and what
"threatens". When you have climbed the mountain of life and have a wide horizon from there,
and somehow the world in a handful, a little bit of confidence, then you don't have the
a desire to return. Youth is a value that unfortunately passes. It remains
our experience, and grant, Lord God, that it be as great as possible, saturated with
wisdom we can use, the ability to enjoy
the moment and the fortitude to tread this humpbacked
world. This is what the old professor, who, let's not kid ourselves, sometimes envies
the young assistant's spurts of madness.
This introduction is a dilemma, perhaps a fatherly concern based on his own
experiences. These are reflections on the fate of the young artist Karol Lewalski,
who still has a long way to go. Will he
Will it succeed as it assumes? Will she find her corner in the land of happiness,
called art? Will he persevere in his resolutions? For it would seem,
that all the seats there are already taken and all the questions have been answered
Answer. Despite my misgivings, I will answer these questions straight away: yes, it can be done,
I'm sure of it, although he had just broken out of the starting blocks and the finish line
far. This is not divination, but a certainty derived from observing his
person. A list of his qualities can be presented, a paean sprinkled with flowers,
which will support my thesis, but let's give it up, after all, life is not about
o laurels, which are only a brief moment of warmth.
Karol Lewalski has taken up the challenge of being an artist. Exactly an artist, and yet
had the opportunity to make a different choice, one that would ensure
him existential peace. After all, he could have become, say, director of the
a thriving company, with a director's salary of course, a certain
salary. He has decided to go into practising something that is more of an illusion
than reality. He has become preoccupied with fallow work, which more often than not brings disasters
crop failure than sweet fruit. So what motivates him? From what I can see,
is passion, the desire to stand out from the grey commonness of an increasingly unified
world and, above all, to define the meaning of existence.
Against fashions and media dictators, the temptations of the consumer world,
flies its banner. It wants to give colour to life and even if it will
She would change it according to his dictates. He doesn't want to be a chameleon who
will take on the colours of the crowd. Seemingly everything ahead of him, as a rookie, but how
If you look at his biography, he has already achieved a lot: awards, exhibitions, significant
the effects of the search for one's own art. When one is young, and on the chest
Ornaments begin to shine, this on the one hand helps to bear the hardship of the work
and the uncertainty of tomorrow, and on the other hand, one can lose track of a realistic assessment of the
as a result of soda hitting his head. Charles is in control and doing
his own. He climbs the sharp wall to the desired ideal without looking
with fear down. What matters is the here and now: the work and its purpose. Karol Lewalski has decided
also be an educator. We work together. Working with him, in my opinion, is
symbiosis. We run a studio attended by young students
with little experience. Charles' age advantage over them would seem to
may be small, but that's just the maths, whereas in the way we work
is noticeable. Lewalski is a born pedagogue who excels in the role of
a liaison between myself and the students. It is where my sense of responsibility
for the whole may miss important details of the needs
young people. He doesn't play older because he doesn't need to, as he senses perfectly
didactic situations in which he should show confidence. Linocut
is not a technique that is as old as the world, but from an old one, and it may come as a surprise that the
Charles chose it as a tool for self-expression. It is not easy, the effort is great
chiselling, but it is nevertheless close to him: more difficult than even the techniques of the
digital, which, after all, he knows very well. What is important to him is not
ease, but the nature of the technique, which determines the final shape of its
work. The poetics of the workshop, its possibilities captivate Charles, so he dances
He performs graceful figures. He wields it with great virtuosity, reigns like a
conductor over the orchestra. The process of colourful linocut, he who did perfectly
knows how complicated it is, how labour-intensive, how quickly it can cool down
the artistic inclinations of an inexperienced artist. What is there to say: Charles has
it in one finger: what he invents, what he feels is the plate and the linocut tools
do. It seems that everything in the discipline is subordinate to him, no
we feel the hardship of the work, but only the essence of creation. Envy it!
I feel under my skin that I have made little of myself, because the wealth of Charles' work
is much greater than I have presented. I know this, but I also do
premeditated, because art is an area of subjective creation
and perception of the world. It is not the word that is supposed to define it, but its visual shape.
Each of us presents, creates and perceives differently, and well. Any
guidance, signposts may not so much be helpful as simply
unnecessary, misleading, because everyone should find themselves in this land in a big
degree himself. The path taken by Karol Lewalski is, in my view, a convincing one,
so interesting and full of colourful emotional twists that it
I am happy to follow it. I feel invited and I accept the invitation.
Perhaps a poorly tailored suit of words that was meant to 'dress up' his
art. Perhaps this is the result of a subconscious jealousy of youth, because despite the
everything, I can feel its note and the pleasant sound of it. When I look surreptitiously at
Charles, for his youthful impulses, the raptures that I do not
(?) I simply cannot, because metrics, because the fire of youthful impulse already
has dimmed more than a little in me. And it is not just jealousy of youth
physically, but above all emotionally. There are many
beauty. Beauty, by me known, but a spark of anxiety stings that something
I overlooked, but what if I did again? This is perhaps the reason for giving one's soul to the devil,
to be able to experience things the way Charles does now.

Waldemar J. Marszałek