Jarek Lustych

/&infin

Looking for "wzór"
[Polish word "wzór" means at the same time "ornament" or "pattern" and the mathematical formula allowing for description and generation of things. Yet both meanings remain in relation that was so highly valued by Islamic mediaeval art.]

Not for dry mathematical formula, even if it is able to create in the form of fractals the most beautiful descriptions of the surface of the world. Here the formula must have the value referring to the universal rule located beyond the world of a chance and appearance. It's difficult to get rid of it since all our cultural development depended on the conception of the God resulting in belief in existence of the objective laws of nature granted by the Absolute, so that it's advisable to seek them. This belief inspired the development of theoretical science that resulted (paradoxically) in scientific materialism. Since theoretical science and materialism cannot satisfy the need for generalised cognition of the world, often singled out as the most elementary human need, all attempts aiming at this direction are validated, the more so, if their value lies not in reaching the goal but in the process itself. Such attempts can be launched also on the ground of art. Jarosław Lustych works as a graphic, yet he treats his works in the special way exploiting only one randomly chosen matrix - a piece of bark. The prints are made with oil paint and all depths and texture nuances result from overlaying them one upon another. The artist turned away from representation of human figure and objects of real world because of their literary character, symbolism anchored in authors and recipients guts. He desired for a gesture more toned and sparse yet just for this reason closer to objective, referring to cognition not to emotional communication. Jarosław Lustych's prints direct our attention towards the force that permeates nature and that appears on it's surface, which is chance that makes impossible the existence of two identical waves or ripples on the surface of water. We know how deep it goes into molecules and atoms, where firm laws guard random movements. Much depend upon this - a flutter of butterfly's wings can launch a hurricane and what about a constant making of prints? Whatever the result of meditations on chance and objective laws, we deal here with the optimistic conception assuming the mystery, cognitive adventure that brings with it possibilities not yet anticipated. The process of creation is so to say simplified. Whole attention concentrates on matter. The author's role is limited to selection of a matrix directly from the world of nature and consistent realisation of the conception. The rest consists of the substance of the matrix and - as it happens with traditional techniques - of the quality of material, the paper bought by the artist in 1986 in China. Beauty of the material, anxiety of spoiling it beyond repair - all that prompted him to impose on himself the responsible assignment connected with an attempt to understand nature, it's order, hidden, yet notwithstanding all randomness of phenomena and destiny, sensed. Spatial arrangement of Chinese lanterns made of printed paper refers to Far Eastern order of holidays that seem to have their origins in aesthetic experience of nature and it's changes. Poetic names of these festivals: Festival of Kite-Flying, Festival of the Autumnal Full Moon or Festival of Lanterns remind one of lyrical and fairy-tale ambience of the first intensive contacts between the cultures of Europe and Far East. These contacts resulted not in destruction of one of the aforementioned cultures but in mutual inspiration. Maybe the most inspiring was exotic wholeness functional yet so different from one's own; the impression of the alternative world where objects and institutions known from one's own culture are found in different rendering. In this wholeness we find objects that are unknown to us, and so attest an absence, existence of an unrealised possibility. All this makes a passage "there" a voyage to the core of one's own "self". The wholeness of experience deduces "self" from cultural categories of conceivableness. "/&infin" is the precisely constructed space where even material is subordinated to primary intention of building as nature builds, making new entities from repeatable elements. "/&infin" introduces us into a reality of art far from commonness of presently popular creativity in which so significant becomes iconography, image quoted and processed; in which great possibilities of, now digital, recording, storing and processing of pictures become not so much a freedom as a limitation. As if the present deluge of images, reflections did not leave us a single dry thread of our own imagination and our own reflection on the rules of creation and cognitive functions of art. As if everything not concomitant with a presently gaining power cultural trend was unessential. The urge to be actual, causative, leads to such formulation of the content of works of art that makes them understandable and convincing for people, who above all perceive pictures, not texts. But even the most creative processing of a cliché and deriding their subject confines interpreters in the same field; does not allow them for reaching the velocity of escape, or quite contrary, for a stop. Lustych seems to be conscious of these dangers and chances are that his creativity demonstrates this to a beholder. One does not need to be a hermit, to cultivate blindly traditions of graphical workshop. One has to present one's own and really fundamental problem, try and err, yet seek. Jarosław Lustych's works give at least a reason for such considerations. In these works there is something of art naive - a humility and a lack of brave assault on tradition - everything was somewhere, somehow, but it does not mean that everything should be forsaken. There is an appeal to the whole in these works, an appeal to that what exists beyond contemporary blend of everything, there is in these works conscious self-limitation that directs attention and imagination of a beholder delicately and as to say casually towards a massage concerning infinity.
Krzysztof Żwirblis