Kasia Turajczyk » abstract painting

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.

Metropolis Series – Resistance 99% – Work in Progress

Kasia — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:30:41 +0000

I am working on my new abstract painting from the Metropolis Series. This time this abstract work will be dedicated to the people of Occupy Wall Street Movement. My painting is entitled "Metropolis – Resistance 99%. The title as well as the painting is inspired by the uprisings across the Arab world, and fueled by the feelings of anger and helplessness of everyday Americans, in the past month as well all people around the world belonging to the 99%.

Occupy Wall Street is a people powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally.#OWS is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations.The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, Greece, Italy and the UK, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people who are writing the rules of the global economy are imposing an agenda of neoliberalism and economic inequality that is foreclosing our future.

Metropolis-The resistance continues ; acrylics on canvas

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Devon Open Studios 2011 – third day "Out of the blue".

Kasia — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:20:35 +0000

Yesterday completely out of the blue a German couple visited my studio. They had just followed the yellow signs, not knowing what would be at the end of them. They not only loved my paintings but even bought one. We talked about modern art, especially modern conceptual German art. She lives in Essen and he is from Wuppertal. I absolutely enjoyed my time spent with those two very interesting individuals who really were into modern conceptual art.

She loves my weird stuff, like My Brain

A conversation with my cosmos, 2010 from the Series My Brain

and all my collages but also my more representative work. They thought about buying my Tree.

The Decrepit limbs of Mr Elm

At one point we went to my Summer Studio (I only paint there between late Spring and middle Autumn). When he saw my Blueberry Biker he decided to buy it. So my lovely Blueberry Biker has left me. Now I have to paint his next adventure and his beautiful lover.

In the late afternoon I had another visitor, a lovely lady who visited me a year before.

The third day of Devon Open Studios 2011 wasn't so bad after all!

Blueberry Biker on his way to his lover hidden in a golden cage.

Science, video and the Boltzmann Paradox

Kasia — Wed, 25 May 2011 11:20:17 +0000

On May, 11th 2011 I was invited by Tiverton Art Society to give a talk about art, video and the Boltzmann Paradox. The society has more than 200 members and is a very active one. Tiverton is an ancient borough and market town in the county of Devon, and the major town in the Mid Devon. It was a real pleasure to be there and to talk to the audience about quantum physics, my own art and art in general, and to present some of my videos. I even read one of my poems, the one about a physicist of course, the Nobel prize winner Niels Bohr.

I had some concerns before the talk, associated with my accent and random blockages of my memory; especially as I am tired (actually I am in a state of chronic fatigue related to my ME condition). I also wanted to talk about quantum physics, thermodynamics and the Boltzmann Paradox in a language in which I still struggle to express myself in the way I want to. When I talk in English I switch my brain into think-in-English mode, which is the way to master a foreign language. But still too often I am sucked in by antimatter, which tries to destroy my brain, confuse my memory and makes it impossible to have an intellectual, sophisticated chat. I find myself missing words, idioms, sayings, humorous expressions, knowledge of complicated grammatical structures. It is a matter of exercises, persistency and strong will, I know that. I am too old and I am lazy, I guess. J) However, I think everything came out successfully. The audience reaction was lively, and I thought they showed a real enthusiasm. I was talking about myself, my art, my videos, and physics and Boltzmann Creatures of course. I brought two big abstract paintings and a few new ones from the “Peter Pan” series. I was myself, spontaneous and a ‘little crazy’ as usual.

The Brits in general are very nice and polite people. Think about it for a moment; all the foreigners using and murdering their beautiful language and then the Brits listening and smiling and trying to understand the others. It is quite an achievement. They have my full admiration for their patience and calm. Definitely the majority of the audience preferred watching art videos and videos about my art than listening to my talk about quantum physics. (Maybe they were bored with my accent and my English!?) I wanted to talk more about thermodynamics and entropy but it was unanimously decided to watch all three videos about the Boltzmann Creatures, Betelgeuse and Mintaka instead of being educated about the laws of physics. Well, the perception of art proceeds in a completely different way than the understanding of the laws of physics. You have to force and to strain your grey cells to understand what quantum physics is all about. On the other hand it is surprising, to me at least, that we don’t try to understand the laws of physics more. As if the world we live in wasn’t extremely complicated. Just think about it for a second. Everything that surrounds us is related to one or another law of physics.

My talk was recorded. From the long video I chose the most interesting and amusing parts, from my point of view of course. Here is a short video part 1:

More on Science, video and the Boltzmann Paradox

RETURN OF PETER PAN

Kasia — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 20:01:07 +0000

Do we really have to give up our dreams and allow society to rule our lives? It starts from the moment that we are born: “You have to do so, you have to behave in this way, you can’t say that, you can’t do that, don’t look like that, don’t move, don’t cry, don’t laugh, don’t think, don’t breath”.

Lying is a bad thing to do but telling the truth isn’t good either. When you grow up society expects from you to have a job, to make money, to find a partner to reproduce new offspring and after that do the same to them what your parents did to you; program them.

For thousands of years humans have agreed to be so and to do so. Without any guarantee that our lives will be better, happier or healthier. The primitive instinct to procreate and the other strong instinct; to stay alive, occupy the humans’ minds. It is encoded in our universal DNA even if we know we all die, eventually; and that our death is often despicable and undeserved.

We are working with persistence to develop new technologies, to make our lives easier but at the same time to destroy each other with more sophistication. We created a kind of civilisation, but it is very primitive. To be true we didn’t change as homo sapience a lot the last 10000 years. Wars, conflicts, exploitation, slavery, deceptions, envy, propaganda, jealousy and the all surrounding fear control our existence.

The best way to survive in this world it is to find your inner child and escape into that reality; hide there and wait till the end of your life.

Puella aeterna and puer eaternus are the heroes of my new series entitled “Peter Pan”. They are not present in these paintings; you can’t find their faces at surfaces or in the background. They are invisible; only their souls are smiling to us.

I think that becoming a mature person isn’t synonym for better. Definitely, it doesn’t mean better life. To stay a child for ever is only the one possible alternative to survive in this horrible world. Contrary the physiologists arguments……..Live Long Peter Pan! Voilà

I am dreaming about different world because the reality of this one I just don’t like. I am painting my own sweet and cute non- reality.

This time I am invite you into the world of Piglet, Mike, Bobby, Tony and Kasia.

This painting is an acrylics on canvas.

"Return of Peter Pan" - acrylics on canvas 2011

Garden Art Wall Installation – CD's – Part II

Kasia — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 15:12:23 +0000

The "Beautiful and Ugly" project has now been officially closed. The deadline has been slightly shifted in time. A few people could not visit me during the Devon Open Studios event itself, and asked me not to dismantle the installation but instead to wait until they had a chance to see it.

Here are the images of the final result:

The end result 2 October 2010

Ugly - final reslut

Beautiful final October 2010

The installation in the Garden of Lyalls Cottage

Unused CD

My conclusions:

Brown, yellow-brown and red colours predominate on the "ugly" side.

Emphatic resistance to the colour red. The CD's in red on the side of "Beautiful" are only in combination with other colours.
They are lots of CDs on the Ugly side that I personally like a lot.

And last, but perhaps the most important conclusion:

De gustibus non est disputandum.

"In matters of taste there is no dispute" said the Romans a long time ago and they were right. Any opinion on the topics of taste is futile. Objectively and logically it can be concluded that there is no good or bad taste. You cannot say that someone is wrong or that someone is right only because he or she likes something different than you. What I like you don’t have to. One should not judge others just because they feel differently and/or think differently.
To recapitulate, in general humans are stupid if they surrender themselves to the pressure of public opinion, newspapers, magazines, fashion designers, critics, art critics and so on. The implication is that the media prey on our stupidity. But this is a different discussion and a subject for another long debate!

Thank you very much to all of you who took part in making this installation.

It will now be dismantled and moved to Poland where I will have a solo exhibition later this year. I will post about the Polish results after the close of the exhibition in Poland in December.

Heaven is in my mind!

Kasia — Fri, 14 May 2010 22:49:39 +0000

Heaven and hell have first of all a symbolic meaning for me. I was born into a family with Catholic traditions (with the exception of a few atheists and one Buddhist). I was born in a country where for many being Catholic is the status quo. For various individuals in Poland being a part of the Roman Catholic family is a criterion of being Polish too. If I was born in India in a Buddhist family hell and heaven would be for me just abstract, meaningless words.

I remember as a child, I had to attend Sunday masses. I didn’t like them; it was for me a kind of torment, literally and metaphorically. Probably I was very afraid to be confronted again and again, by the fearful personifications of God presented by the clerics. I was terrified to be punished for all the sins that I hadn’t committed yet, but would in the future. There was no escape from that. Even the angels had a kind of apocalyptic dimension. When lying in bed, I often thought about my “personal” Angel. I had no doubt about the fact that somewhere an Angel was watching me. I had one big problem. I wasn’t sure if it was a good Angel or a bad one. Maybe it was a hellish one and not a holy one. I had a picture of an angel hanging above my bed. He was beautiful, with blue eyes and white hair and a very, very distressing smile. And so it was that my Angel was gazing at me, as if he knew that one day I would betray him and leave him. When at the age of 12 I had rebelled and had declared that “I don’t want to believe and I categorically deny any belief in such a cruel, evil, bad god and I do not want to be frightened any more of hell, devils and original sin” I had terrible dreams for the first months afterwards. In my dreams I was somewhere close to the church. It was a big Gothic church, and it was always night. I was attacked by devils, they tore me, hurt me; wild winds had jerked me into the square in front of the church, darkness and a terrible fear occupied my dreams. That was a horrible experience, a nightmare, but even more it cemented my decision that God, who is haunting me, punishing me, and scaring me, will not be my god.
And so it happened, that I became somehow atheist, somewhat Buddhist, a follower of my personal faith; all together my religion is a kind of eclecticism.

Since that time I have been trying to avoid that hell on earth, in my daily life, in my relationships with others, but also in my thoughts and feelings. Hell and Heaven, we create them for ourselves, here on this planet, in our lives, our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, hatreds, and in relationships.
Hell and Heaven are also created for us by nature, life, and the condition of being homo sapiens, something that is unavoidable; we can only accept it.

After this very long introduction it is time for introducing my new painting.

This is an installation composed of four panels, titled “Heaven Is In My Mind”. It belongs to the “My Brain” series.
There is a lot of blue, gold, purple, dark plum, grains of all sorts, and recycled stuff.
It is large: 80 cm x 80 cm.

From the Series My Brain – when the demons are awakened (new version)

Kasia — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:42:35 +0000

Sometimes it happens that I resume a painting that was supposed to be finished. I try to improve it, change it, overpaint it or add new things to it. After a few sessions the painting changes and sometimes something totally new arises. Most of the time it is a positive change, but it has happened before that I totally ruin my painting. Fortunately it doesn’t happen often!

The painting “when the demons are awakened” from the series My Brain tortured me so intensively that I had to change it. For comparison purposes I am publishing both the old and the new versions. In the new version I worked with more tricky colours and I added more crazy materials. It is more frantic and wilder. I think that the words “frantic” and maybe even "furious” could describe this new painting. What else should you expect when the demons are awakened?

My Brain when the demons are awakened - new

My brain when the demons are awakened - old

The Boltzmann Brain

Kasia — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 11:50:43 +0000

I really believe that the theory of the Boltzmann Brain Paradox is very probably correct. I truly believe in it. It is my own paranoiac delirium.

This new painting is inspired by the latest ideas about Boltzmann Brains from Don Page, a physicist – “Unless our universe is decaying at an astronomical rate (i.e., on the present cosmological timescale of Giga years, rather than on the quantum recurrence timescale of googolplexes), it would apparently produce an infinite number of observers per commoving volume by thermal or vacuum fluctuations (Boltzmann brains). If the number of ordinary observers per commoving volume is finite, this scenario seems to imply zero likelihood for us to be ordinary observers and minuscule likelihoods for our actual observations.”

If that is true, it would mean that you and me, you reading this and I writing this, are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than persons with a real past and possible future (if we are lucky or unlucky enough). My and your memories and the world we think we see around us are illusions.
“Hence, our observations suggest that this scenario is incorrect and that perhaps our universe is decaying at an astronomical rate.” In other words it means our universe will die one day.

This is my paranoia – my hallucination. Millions of Boltzmann Brains are floating in my brain.

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