ARTOSTRADA: paintings and drawings by Damian Pietrek, posters by Sławomir Śląski
The Artostrada exhibition at the BWA Art Gallery in Wałbrzych, Książ Castle branch, presents the works of Damian Pietrek – academic teacher, draughtsman, painter and board member of the Katowice branch of the Association of Polish Artists and Designers, and Sławomir Śląski – graphic designer, poster artist and academic teacher from Jaworzno.
Artostrada counterpoises different aspects of art.
Sławomir Śląski’s poster exhibition
Watching his works in the b1 format, we are surrounded mainly by letters and austere typographic and geometric compositions. The letters do not comprise a normal text. Each of them in treated individually, and viewed together they become information and illustration at the same time. Their composition makes perfect use of the arrangement in which the author has placed them. He bears in mind the special meaning a poster is supposed to have. Firstly, it should inform, and secondly, it should attract the eye in today’s informational noise. These requirements pose a certain dissonance: how to attract attention without falling into an excess of the means used? How to keep balance?
Damian Pietrek presents two cycles of his works
“Planes and parallel realities” is a cycle of 12 drawings on canvas, mostly in a 140 x 95 cm format, created in 2013-2015. The title of the series refers to the idea of influence, the mutual permeation of two seemingly mutually exclusive areas: a delicate, dense drawing, and apparently random actions which are almost destructive for the original drawing. The need for (self)reflection and (self)construction within the scope of creative activities is plainly visible and it has caused clear differences in my approach (e. g. in the method of portrayal) as compared with my previous works. Therefore, I had to confront my own habits, assume that by principle I am going to blunder and provoke errors (e. g. technological). I subjected the intricately made drawing to an experiment during which it underwent partial destruction. This conception not only allows but welcomes the elements which are normally (because of a certain kind of “propriety”) more or less consciously eliminated, such as the presence of accidental, unintentional effects (cracked paint, grooves, flaking surfaces), which – when provoked – are no longer perceived as errors but as an element of the “gnothi seauton” (self-discovery), of one’s reflectiveness and self-knowledge, understood in the Foucauldian way in the framework of the ancient “self-care.”