If there is a way to free ourselves from suffering
We must use every moment to find it.
Only a fool wants to go on suffering.
Isn’t it sad to knowingly imbibe poison?

Seventh Dalai Lama

Yes, we suffer, at every moment and throughout the world. Every second, someone dies, every second, someone is murdered, tortured, beaten or maimed. Some people are separated from their loved ones. Others are abandoned, betrayed, expelled and rejected. Some are killed out of hatred, greed, ignorance, ambition, pride or envy. Parents lose their children, children lose their parents. Some die of hunger, cold, exhaustion; others are charred by fire, crushed by rocks, or swept away by the waters. This is a simple truth. These are not merely words, but a reality that is an intrinsic part of our daily lives: death and suffering. But we can’t turn away from it. That would be indifference or cowardice.

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

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.

What are the inspirations for my new work?. Definitely the colours and the sounds of the garden of Lyalls Cottage and the fields and meadows around Dunchideock, of Devon; the animals in and around the garden; the hills behind the river Exe in the East and de shapes of Exmoor in the North, the shooting stars at the cloudless sky in the night and all the others inexpressible sensational impulses and invisible mystical creatures.

I am so happy to be here, Devon is a wonderful spot to live!

Here are the images of my new collages and installations. I will make a separate post about the sculptures.

collage canvas prints

Here are some photos after a couple of days.

I presented this painting, together with the other two from the series Metropolis at my last solo exhibition (Lodz, Poland) and the reaction was very positive. However the paintings were taken as a very fatalistic vision of our life by the visitors.

Metropolis III - Nothing is certain but death and taxes' painting by Kasia B. Turajczyk; acrylics on canvas 90 cm x 90 cm

Going back to the taxes: from time to time I have to spend a lot of time with my accountant discussing my taxes. In a certain way accountancy is highly creative work. Nevertheless I hate it, I hate to do the administrative work and I don’t like to pay the taxes. And it is not that I don’t want to give my money away for a good reason or to charitable projects. I just don’t want to give my money to the government who will spend it and invest it in/for the salaries of the clerks, politicians, their weird expenses, their trips to more or less exotic places, idiotic ideas, insane wars and thousands of other preposterous fixations.

About Death – it is sure that we were born at some point and it is sure that we will die once. We know when we were born but we don’t know when we will pass away. And we don’t know how. But, this raises another question.  Is it actually important how we die? In what way, how long, distinguished or not, humane or not, in a total fear or in a peaceful reconciliation?
I think that all the issues about death are very unimportant at the end. quasi intellectual – quasi philosophical – part hypocritical debates.
Death is a split second when we go from a kind of material condition of entity into nonentity. For this act of nature isn’t important at all where, when and in what kind of situation we are dying. For sure nobody knows, what death actually is, what is after death, what one can expect on the other distinct side.

Maybe, a black hole?

And as Woody Allen says in one of his movies “Fear of death! It’s funny. I have that too. My dog has that too.”

P.S.1.  Medieval art is one of my favourite art periods, I just love it. I am fascinated by the fact that the people of the medieval period could have lived in such intimacy with death. Life was never-ending; death was a mere interruption of the continuum; after which the soul would await the Last Judgement

P.S.2.   Comment from David: “On a side note I think it's interesting how surrealist art can be open to different interpretations, each clearly dependant on the individuals own knowledge and experience… but then I guess that's the same with anything that's not accompanied by words. Either way, a very good picture! ”

This work is about Metropolis and the loneliness, Metropolis and the despair, Metropolis and the choices .

It is an acrylic on canvas. The diverse colours of red have a more nuances in real than on this photograph and the red is more red than that.

The common commotions of red are  aggression, blood, courage, devils, energy, fire, guilt, hell, love, passion, stop, anger, hatred, pain, socialism, sacrifice, autumn, sin, violence, negativity, danger, warning, lust, communism, blushing, exit, friendship, honour, leadership and Good Luck (in China!)

Metropolis II by Kasia B. Turajczyk 80 cm x 80 cm

This painting is linked to my first painting in the series Metropolis  viz. "Metropolis alias Moloch".To see the meaning of this series please go to http://blog.kasiaturajczyk.com/2009/02/new-painting-moloch-alias-metropolis/

]]> http://blog.kasiaturajczyk.com/2009/06/metropolis/feed/ 5 http://blog.kasiaturajczyk.com/2009/02/new-painting-moloch-alias-metropolis/ http://blog.kasiaturajczyk.com/2009/02/new-painting-moloch-alias-metropolis/#comments Sun, 22 Feb 2009 20:03:03 +0000 Kasia http://blog.kasiaturajczyk.com/?p=79 A vision of a painting about cities, the gigantic and the smaller ones too, was on my mind for a long time. I adore big, bigger, gigantic cities – Moloch (the god, the machine – be free to make your own interpretation of the meaning of this word).  I was born in a city of almost one million people; I have lived in a few capitals of the world. I have seen a lot of big cities. They have always fascinated me, those cities. When waiting at the bus stop or the tram stop, or just waiting for someone or something. When rambling for hours aimlessly and absorbing that “something” which determines "the uniqueness" of a particular city, I have listened to the anonymity and the emptiness of the hideous cacophony of the reverberation of the big body. I always wanted to observe the city from above, high above the houses, the tower blocks, the skyscrapers, the Gothic cathedrals, the towers, the people. Watching the city from space, from an invisible area like a Boltzmann Brain observing the Earth. Feeling the city, becoming the brain of the city; a dream of mine – it could be an astonishing experience.

More on New Painting – Moloch alias Metropolis

A vision of a painting about cities, the gigantic and the smaller ones too, was on my mind for a long time. I adore big, bigger, gigantic cities – Moloch (the god, the machine – be free to make your own interpretation of the meaning of this word).  I was born in a city of almost one million people; I have lived in a few capitals of the world. I have seen a lot of big cities. They have always fascinated me, those cities. When waiting at the bus stop or the tram stop, or just waiting for someone or something. When rambling for hours aimlessly and absorbing that “something” which determines "the uniqueness" of a particular city, I have listened to the anonymity and the emptiness of the hideous cacophony of the reverberation of the big body. I always wanted to observe the city from above, high above the houses, the tower blocks, the skyscrapers, the Gothic cathedrals, the towers, the people. Watching the city from space, from an invisible area like a Boltzmann Brain observing the Earth. Feeling the city, becoming the brain of the city; a dream of mine – it could be an astonishing experience.

I think that the giant cities, like NYC, LA or Mexico City are an unhealthy phenomenon. They are more likely ill and degenerate bodies than healthy ones; but at the same time they are absolutely fascinating organisms. They are fascinating in the same way as a patient with an unknown but terminal disease. Everything is possible. Millions of potential viruses, germs, cancers, infections…. Is the immunological system strong enough to create antibodies to protect them from attacks by their own body tissues?  Will the treatment be helpful or it will just damage the body more?  Will the patient be saved by a miracle? There are no certain answers, only experimentation is possible.

Hereby I present my ‘City’ – my Metropolis. I love big cities but at the same time I don’t have a good feeling about them. My city is a mystic and mythological Moloch but also a modern one; different when seen from above, different when seen from below, different inside, different outside. There is little connection between the top and the bottom; there is little connection between the dark and the light. There is only one thing that really connects the top and the bottom – the loneliness. The one thing that is common for all species is the loneliness, it doesn’t matter if you are at the top or on the bottom, the loneliness is everywhere, omnipotent, especially in the cities. The big cities are a synonym for loneliness and nothing more.

While at the top of K2, we are also lonely but in a different way; the loneliness in nature is more ‘normal’, eventually we are a part of nature, too. It is more an emptiness in the Buddhist sense. This is something that we can try to understand, it is more cheerful than painful. The loneliness between the 10 million others, locked in a labyrinth of bewitched abnormalities, is cruel, absurd, unbearable, and paradoxical. The sense of our existence is determined by the sense of the senselessness of that existence. Vive la merde!

To make this painting I used the best quality acrylic paint, dried herbs, rice seeds and couscous seeds. Only three colours have been used: black, orange and vermilion.

Metropolis alias Moloch by Kasia B. Turajczyk

Metropolis – acrylic on canvas; 80cmx80cm

P.S. Mythologization and mystification of the big cities are only the illusions and lies of poets, painters, photographers, movie directors, and me too.

metropolis canvas prints

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