Studio

I am using phrases I know very well, but it should be explained that all the works in the album are prints made on paper using the linocut technique, an activity which is quite masochistic and time-consuming. Why bother with the complexity of the layers, the presses and the painstaking chiselling of the matrix? After all, you could just pick up a brush and paint it. And yet, no. It takes about two months to create one large-format print. Two months is quite a large chunk of time, during which a lot can happen and change. Apart from the relatively fixed initial assumptions, it is this conglomeration of various moods and events affecting the artist over a given period that produces a certain end result. In this sapphic technique, there is no room for corrections. That is why very often starting with a landscape ended with a nude, and starting with a nude ended with an equestrian competition. In my opinion, it is this unknown that is most fascinating. The possibility of surprising yourself. A comparison to adventure comes to mind here. Each of these works is a kind of small expedition into the unknown. If I knew the final result of a print in advance, I would be nothing more than a craftsman. Through the not inconsiderable gamble of searching for the one, best version, it often turns out that something doesn't work out, but even failure can be rewarding. Often when asked about my interests and inspirations, I reply that I can't remember. There were and are so many. It is this coincidence and the attempt to tame it that gives me the most fun in the act of creation itself, leaving aside the aspect of the final product.

In today's world of computers, Instagram and happenings in digital clouds, is there still a place for barbaric traditional graphic techniques? Must they pass into oblivion or rest under the carpet of an old museum and stand right next to a wax scene depicting cavemen throwing spears at a mammoth? Surely not! It turns out that great and interesting things can be created in the collision of tradition and modernity. Today, the artist cannot stand by and wait for better times. Without wanting to drown, one has to make some moves. From a distance it might seem chaotic or even desperate, but always some. I dare say that in time, globally speaking, there will be a beautiful new style of graphic design (and perhaps a swimming one too), born out of the various benefits of a rich culture, many years of toil by mystical graphic masters and the benefits of the latest technology. The classic methods of reflecting art are captivating in their authenticity and contain a kind of poetics. I collect all that is most precious in them, add new forms of expression and then transfer my own interpretation of the whole onto the print.

I look at my prints today and recall the periods in which they were created. It is not an exceptionally long period of time, but from my current perspective, it is nonetheless significant. It is, after all, more than 13 years since the first print. When I try to remember what guided me in a given work, I can - horror of horrors, I will contradict myself - see a considerable influence of the events that took place in my life at the time. Despite being completely unaware at the time of creation, I recognise past fears, hopes or desires. Whether it's the birth of a child, or the illness of my wife, or my first professional successes, or perhaps just the desire for uninhibited fun. It makes me wonder whether I'm trying to bend my memories and over-interpret my past intentions, or whether we should accept that it's the subconscious that guides us. And no matter how hard we deny it, as someone has already written somewhere on the wall... all in all, I've forgotten what it was.