Kasia Turajczyk » Surf Art

Contemporary Art in the Community #1/n

Kasia — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:33:09 +0000

“Contemporary Art in the Community” is a joint project between me Kasia Turajczyk and econnexus.org.

The idea of taking art to the community came from Jim (my partner). I think he was just bored with my constant monologue about contemporary art, or to be more accurate perhaps I should say modern contemporary art.

My monologue was about these issues:

How alienated modern contemporary art is from the image about art of the average man and woman in the street. The average person visiting a very contemporary art gallery or modern art centre at the present time doesn’t understand most of the presenting art works. She or he wants to understand the “art works”. Because they can’t understand it, explain it, find any sense in it, they think they don’t possess the academic knowledge about modern art, and they just don’t like it.
How alienated, exhausted and recessive art that is currently presented in contemporary art galleries, art shows and modern art museums. Actually, nobody understands contemporary art these days: not the art historicists, not the art curator, not even the people who are writing the articles in the art magazines or introductions in the books. Very often even the makers/the artists don’t understand them either. They just like it and make it up, because that is what others expect of them.
Art doesn’t exist anymore. Most of the 'Art' isn't art any more. Nothing is art and everything is art. Art is about personal and emotional engagement. You like it or you do not, you feel it or you do not feel it; it makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it makes you angry, it makes you disgusted. It is OK! How few techniques and skills are possessed by the new generation of students graduating from the Art Colleges these days.
Most of the artists presented in museums are talking to themselves, and have an inner dialogue with their empty mind.
However Pablo Picasso said: “Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? .. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.” Art is about feeling….or should I say NON-ART is about sensation. Maybe we never should think about what an artist is trying to convey, just concentrate on what the piece means to you, how it makes you feel. After all it is your personal experience!

And so forth and so forth…..

One day, just a few hours before our trip to the ocean (body boarding) Jim came out with a idea about taking ART to ordinary people and discussing contemporary art and art in general. “And the word became flesh and dwelt among us” since September 29, 2011.

The primary aim of the project is to take contemporary art out of galleries and museums, to take it out of artist's studios, and to show it to all sorts of different people in a variety of environments and locations around South West England.

We would like to discover from the ordinary people of Devon and Cornwall, what kind of art they like and what they don’t like. What contemporary art means to them? Are they interested in art at all? Is there a place for art in their life, living room, kitchen, mind? Or maybe they are not interested in art at all? These are the sort of questions we are going to be asking people on our travels. Maybe we will ask you too!

The preview of Contemporary Art in the Community

Widemouth Bay, North Cornwall, South West England
Thursday 29th September 2011

In which Graham meets a being born in the nebula of the constellation of Orion for the very first time, and is moved by Mintaka's message for mankind.

Red Swan – a new painting

Kasia — Mon, 18 May 2009 21:19:10 +0000

The inspiration for this Red Swan painting is the Black Swan; the Black Swan phenomenon, the Black Swan problem, the History of the Black Swan and the Black Swan book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In summary, just the Black Swan. Actually till the moment that I held this book by Taleb in my hand I had never before heard about the Black Swan problem and phenomenon. My friend gave this book to me and said that I will love it. You see I studied philosophy and I love complicated, stubborn, controversial and unusual things. This book blew me away. This guy, Nicholas Taleb is an incredibly intelligent person-brain, intellectual dissident and a brilliant writer and in some way an academic libertarian.

Back to the Black Swan phenomenon. Before the discovery of Australia, people were convinced that all swans were white. This fact illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge.
I will describe here the Black Swan phenomenon using the words of Taleb.

First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectation; because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

Summarize the triplet: rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective predictability.

What is the Black Swan logic? What you don’t know is far more relevant that what you do know. And now think about my Red Swan. What you don’t see in my painting is far more relevant that what you do see!

Here is the painting: the painting consists of two panels.

Red Swan by Kasia B.Turajczyk

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

New Abstract Painting: "Paranoia III – The wonderful life of a Bay Leaf"

Kasia — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 12:37:14 +0000

The Bay Leaf has taken the most positive, responsible and substantial place amongst all the other kinds of leaves. When still on its laurel tree (Laurus Nobilis) one calls it the "bay laurel leaf". It is always green. It is even possible for a bay leaf to mutate and regenerate and to live for more than 100 years.

As a dried leaf, the Bay Leaf is used as a flavouring to spice up our meals. Polish bigos is impossible to imagine without bay leaves. Can someone imagine garam masala without bay leaves? No, full stop! The Bay leaf is toxic. Especially if someone decides to drink a brew of bay leaves, say more than 10 litre. That could be harmful. As a drink it isn't hideous, I tried it once and it's actually OK, somewhat bitter with a strong taste.

What is the essence of the Bay Leaf? Everyone hears about it, everyone tastes it in one or another dish. But recently the bay leaf has fallen into obscurity and it is no longer as important as it was in the past. A long time ago the laurel tree was a noble tree; it was a sacred tree of the ancient Greek God Apollo. In Chinese folklore there is a great laurel tree on the moon. It used to much more than a mere spice.

My holy Bay Leaf, today I adore you with this new painting. Especially for you, I made this painting, using the best quality acrylic paints and I even fixed your authentic "SELF" inside the painting. The painting is made up of two panels. On the central panel you can see two real bay leaves. The panel is 100 cm x 120 cm. The second panel is a small one with a print of my right hand. It's function is as an homage to the cave painters of the stone age.

"Paranoia III – The wonderful life of a Bay Leaf" – by Kasia B. Turajczyk; 2009

A new painting – "The freedom of thinking – freedom of choice"

Kasia — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:54:24 +0000

One can achieve dynamism in an abstract painting through diverse effects. For example: the choices of the colours and how one combines them, the materials that are used, the contrast between the colours, the styles, the structure and the techniques. Of course there are thousands more possibilities and explanations depending on the philosophy of the artist or the critic. Dynamism in a painting could be cheerful but it also could be dramatic.

I think that emptiness, when contrasted with its opposite, can be very dramatic and unsettling, especially in an abstract painting. Emptiness should not be confused with the void; they are two different concepts.
(Emptiness is a key concept in Buddhist philosophy, or more precisely, in the ontology of Mahayana Buddhism. The phrase "form is emptiness; emptiness is form" is perhaps the most celebrated paradox associated with Buddhist philosophy.)

"The Freedom of thinking - freedom of choice" by Kasia Turajczyk - 120cmx120cm /2009

The painting “The freedom of Thinking” is a new art work. It is a 6 panelled painting. Three of the panels are fairly expressive; the other three are fairly simple and calm. Two of the three are extremely simple, almost empty. The white one is just a white space with two lines, one dirty-white whilst the other line is black. The second canvas, the red-orange one, is only disturbed by one black line, like a shadow. The third panel is coloured black and white. It has more narrative content.

The three remaining panels are very expressive, full of traces of brushes and pallet knifes, the contours between the colours are aggressive and rough. The contrast between the calmness and the not-calmness, expression and the absence of it, is it significant? Maybe the calmness and its opposite complement one another more than contradict each other?
The person who buys the painting (the 6 panels) has the freedom to make a choice by their selection of the panels. He or she can hang the panels in the same way I think they belong together, but this is not inevitible. The person who will own the painting is free to make up her/his own mind; they are absolutely free to create their own composition. He or she can put the 6 panels together or maybe separate them into two groups; the dynamic group and the calm group on different walls, or maybe all of the 6 on the same wall but with a space between or maybe each of the panels will hang in different rooms.

I wonder to what extent that freedom to create ones own composition from the 6 panels will generate a new art work. I made the painting but at the moment that I cease to own it anymore the painting begins to live its own life. I believe that non-figurative art is “dispossessed”; a free interpretation is the essence of such art. Only the title of the art work may determine the thoughts of the person who looks at the painting.
It is my strong belief that freedom of thinking is the only freedom that we possess, and that the freedom of thinking at the same time determines our choices. In the sense that we only have free choice if those choices are conditional on our free thinking. Whether we like it or not we are slaves of our material existence and our material possessions. Only our dreams and our thoughts are free and in some way independent.

Three of the panels are painted using acrylics and the other three are oil paintings. I used brushes, pallet knives, rice seeds and dried grasses.

New Surf Painting

Kasia — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 11:50:40 +0000

I have just finished a new painting. It is a very unusual one for me. It is a kind of expressionist-abstract painting. The inspiration for this painting was surfing. My partner in crime loves surfing and he surfs too. He taught me a few years ago how to survive bodyboarding in the Atlantic ocean on the big waves (bodyboarding is a kind of surfing for 'wretches' or silly persons). Since then I am addicted to it, too. I love watching surfers floating in the waves in the ocean and I love bodyboarding by myself. It is a transcending experience when you are under water in the middle of a whirlpool and you have no idea if you will surface or not.

Back to the art . The title of my new painting is "Red Surfer". It is a 4 panelled painting. My first surf-art work. I will definitely paint more in the future.

I used almost no brushes only pallet knifes and my fingers. It is an oil painting. The canvas that I used for the 4 panels are small; 40cm by 40cm. I started with just one canvas. Then I got an idea for a triptych, and then the triptych increased to 4 panels.

Here is the painting. Please, tell me what you think about it.