My thoughts about two and about seven

 

and two and seven,

 

mashed paper onto concrete

water into the surface

fingers into the material

furrows

light on the slopes of the furrows

shadow on their opposite sides

 

This process influenced the way I thought about art where simply the raw material itself became the means of expression.

 

Over time my technique evolved and after a while this allowed me to create various formats and my first works in paper.

 

My original approach was based on contact between my hands and the material.  By the time I started producing works in paper the emphasis was on the contact between the material and space.

 

Groups of papers had rhythm and I called them codes.

 

I remember as a child, watching specks of fibre energised by the sun which floated and stood out against a light background.  Today tiny specks of material form part of my paper structures.   I had changed my means of expression from traditional painting techniques to expressing myself through working in paper and this meant I thought differently about art.  Before my evolution I regarded paper as a platform for watercolours.  The rawness of papers changed my outlook and I no longer saw paper as simply a foundation for drawing, painting or sculpting but as a combination of a number of values, which can be used to better express existence.  After separating paper pulp from canvas or wood and liberating it from the wall, it then struck me that a work of art should not be confined to a single entity.  Each of several entities then became part of an undefined whole.  My efforts to reduce the resulting structures down to their bare essence and to eliminate what was unnecessary resulted in an intensification of my concentration, meditation and reflection. 

 

After some time I became able to create paper structures with an opposite value on each side. As for the construction of my codes (groups of paper) I introduced the numbers seven and two.   Symbolically, seven expresses completeness and infinity and has the function of a module when it is repeated.  Two, from which multiplicity and therefore reality begins, inscribes itself into my papers and parallel structures.  The duality of opposites provides us with a direction or pointer.  The full spectrum cannot be weighed or measured, therefore the process of building is guided by mathematics and the eye.  Depending on the concept, each paper can have one, two or four values on each side which I bring into being in a decisive manner by expressing what previously came into my imagination.  This decisiveness is possible because I will only allow any changes before I start creating a paper; once I start the creative process I don’t depart from the original idea.  Sometimes it takes years to realise the initial idea.

 

The fibres which are used to build my structures have their beginning in the natural world. During the process of creating paper I apply these fibres in moderation. The texture of these fibres opposes or filters light.  Light either becomes lost in their excessiveness or in getting through, it balances their opposite values.  The greater the depth, the greater the subtraction of light.  So blackness becomes fullness, a spectrum in itself, an exit.  Together with the extension of blackness, light unifies with this blackness.  Faced with an excess of light the blackness disperses or disappears.  When the eye receives wavelengths of all frequencies, then the resulting white, in its fullness, unifies the light.  Whiteness in itself, though not emitting any light, may serve as a test of light, since when enabled by light, its own quality becomes intensified.  Cause and effect is a combination of two opposing values that create a central section.  I create an illusion of space by harnessing the full spectrum of light through varying the composition of fibres.  The relationship between the illusion of space that I create and the real space is the essence of my codes.  In every apparently completed code and in my imagination, a limit and a journey is born, so the codes are at one moment both open and closed.  

 

The codes are closed by virtue of the values of the extreme opposite ends of the spectrum.  They become thought of as a limitation in the understanding of the beginning and the end, if you follow the logic around.  The codes are open because an end implies a next beginning, and a beginning indicates the previous value.  Seeing an intuitive direction of work is a labour for the observer.  If during my work there arises a need for continuation, or if a reason for a new method of construction appears then I start everything from the beginning.  In this way each part forms only a certain element of the whole.  It is then that the codes become a whole made up of three elements: two opposites, black and white, and the central section with a range of greys.  

 

“A sheet expands”, and what is visible is only an example within the greater whole that we need to appreciate.  In art, as in the methodology of science, I adopted a rule never to stop, one can always go on further.  The territory of one’s art is closed and inaccessible, there is nothing and nobody in that space other than one’s own consciousness and intuition.  Only the impact of one’s art opens out the territory to a public viewer.  A single human drawing in a cave is enough to perceive that it contains both life and philosophy.  These first gestures were the most authentic and mysterious, as if the person and the rock were interconnected.  This force of expression cannot be bettered by anything; after this, art as we know it seems decadent.   

 

The first manifestation of art was unified with life and living, and if one could feel the present in the same way as one can feel the past, perhaps creativity would be unnecessary, but as things are, creativity is only of borderline value.  If one thinks that in art one can cross a border, one still stays behind.  Today’s art as we know it was the rational for today’s art and no-one can deny this.  The language of modern art opens itself up to various aspects of life, and benefits from a certain liberty.   What is the scope of my art within this framework?  Self-criticism is difficult, I will therefore list only those elements that give meaning to my work. 

 

The realisation of my art concentrates on time, space, light and the absence of light.  Without going into the complexities of time-space, it occurs to me that observing events that take place one after another is the only way to understand time.  When the Universe is divided into sections one can feel the passage of time.  This triad - time, space and light - that is built within our thoughts determines the way in which we live our lives.  Past, present and the absent future give sense and mystery to our existence.  The relativity of time and space allows us to grasp the greatest secret of the Universe in which the Earth is an insignificant point.  Here, within this time and this space, all our events are happening and this changes our awareness.

 

If the order of things remained unchanged, the notion of time would probably remain redundant.  But as it is, our understanding of time is determined by the manifestation of its existence.  The Universe has an indefinite scale of time-space and this is required for all the events that take place within it to happen.  In the same way my own range is determined by my own code.  I take the view that my work is similar to space or even time; one’s awareness becomes dependent on it.  Future forecasts depend on earlier events that may have occurred and emerge as a new attribute of time.   However, it is possible that time will never emerge from my paper and that space will remain simply as a test of space.  Now the paper in its static state does not reflect such attributes.  It is the viewer walking around a work that gives rise to these attributes.  Both the paper and the viewer become a work of art.  Perhaps I will conclude one day that I cannot go any further, that I am myself a part of a system, the range of which is complete and will become in turn a part of nature.  I will then think as before, that to the extent that a border is a place beyond which an event does not reach, then we ourselves are such a border, and to the extent that everything has borders, then such borders are also ours.

 

hand

hourglass

traces a line

light on the slope of the line

shadow on the opposite side

 

and two and seven

 

Andrzej S. Prokopiuk