Adam Mazur

Żuki, maluchy, trabanty
and other syrenki*

“In fact it is a series devoted to death”, declares Wojtek Wilczyk when asked about the topic of his newest series Życie po życiu (Life after life). If pictures of parts or the whole bodies of cars transformed into side road advertisements, flowerbeds and decorations encourage us to contemplate the process of passing away and transistoriness of existence, they do it in an emotionally neutral way.

Wilczyk creates a documentary project concerning disintegration of material reality, which reminds rather of a medical atlas depicting variations and the following phases of disease development, than, characteristic for the media, pursuit of sensational and spectacular, thus extraordinary death.Wilczyk’s project resembles an atlas also thanks to careful use of formal means: simple, square frame, central composition, no staging or manipulation. Withdrawal of artistic subject and giving way to the photographed reality distinguishes Życie po życiu (Life after life) from among pathetic attempts to visualize death. Paradoxically, the use of color also reinforces documentary loftiness, obviously something new comparing to the previous photographic series by Wilczyk (Z wysokości (From the heights), Czarno-biały Śląsk (Black-and-white Silesia) or Postindustrial). Color, attracting attention, often aggressive and seductive – just like in the case of a side road advertisement – according to the master of artistic photography, deprives the photographed reality of artistic and in fact sentimental aura.

It has become quite a common practice among critics writing about photography and death to quote Roland Barthes. To follow the tradition, I suggest to remind, although in slightly different context, Mythologies by the same author written half a century ago. In one of this brilliant essays eRBe he wrote about – you bet! – the newest model of Citroen (about the famous “goddess”): “I think that car is nowadays an accurate enough equivalent of huge gothic cathedrals: I mean – a great creation of an epoch constructed in a passionate imagination of unknown artists, driven in dreams, if not in reality, by the whole nation, which in his form appropriates a completely magical object.” In text by Barthes – just like in famous and not in the least ironical comparison of Rolls-Royce’s hood to a portico of a Greek temple by Erwin Panofski, or the Italian futurists’ love of automobile – there is a true admiration, today slightly forgotten, for industrial beauty. Magic strength of industrial forms organized the life of communities also in Poland, where, instead of goddess or rolls, “Maluchy”, the greatest achievement of native motorization FSO Polonez, or Trabants imported from GDR were unattainable objects of desire of the masses. Only slightly nostalgic leftovers blended well into contemporary landscape of consumer society remained after former dreams (not accidentally most wrecks serve as commercial advertisements). In this context it is clearly visible that photographs by Wilczyk (not only of cars, but also Postindustrial) illustrate the twilight of modernity promising us better future, which we can achieve thanks to technical progress. Looking trough the prism of photographed remains of Syrenki, Small and Big Fiats, Zaporożce, or other Żuki* we are more careful when it comes to comparing cars to a gothic cathedral.

In Wilczyk’s works, also photographs presenting car wrecks, it is not difficult to notice something typical of melancholic climate of ruins, so willingly contemplated by romanticists. A text by Marek Janczyk, a critic who writes for a newly created Polish-German magazine Bluehn shows how treacherous such an interpretation can be. The particular atmosphere of described photographs allowed the critic to classify Wojciech Wilczyk (together with Ireneusz Zjeżdżałka and Krzysztof Zieliński) as one of “new romanticists”. In the text entilted Współcześni romantycy (Contemporary romanticists) Janczyk in a far-fetched way proves the continuity of contemporary Polish photography, based on post-romantic paradigm, from Andrzej Różycki and Wojciech Wilczyk to Marek Gardulski. Document of time, seemingly objective and cool, in fact engaged and emotional – Jańczyk writes about photographs by Wilczyk. Referring to the text from Bluehen will allow for better understanding of the peculiarity of Wilczyk’s creativity and whole tendency in modern photography that has been created around it. The author of Czarno-biały Śląsk (Black-and-white Silesia) undoubtedly belongs to that group of artists who in the recent years knowingly placed themselves in the opposition to artistic photography, long tradition of which in Poland originated in the romantic understanding of the role of an artist and art. In the artistic environment it is well known that Wilczyk, artist, critic and poet, declared personal war to staged, artistic, post-pictorial photography, in other words to each kind of photography which denies the nature of the medium, namely the objective registering reality (another thing would be comparing Wilczyk’s poetic practice, the author of series “Ctrl+c, Ctrl+v” with his stance as a photographer). Thus, Wilczyk, Zjeżdżałka, Zieliński, Dubiel, Milach and other are “new documentary photographers” and not “new romanticists”. Strongly rejecting quasi-romantic blindness allowing to notice and appreciate passionate engagement of the artist in the field where we deal with coldness of rational analysis, we can clearly see the new, technical and objective, documentary chapter in Polish modern art and Wilczyk is one of its founders.

Obviously, car wrecks stimulate nostalgic and melancholic thinking (Janczyk writes that photographs [by Wilczyk] seem to express a painful loneliness of buildings and machines abandoned by people who are always absent in those images. And again, the awareness mingles with history, literal meaning with metaphor). Resisting nostalgia overcoming not only former lucky users of two-stroke vehicles from GDR, it is worth trying to notice in the newest Wilczyk’s project something more than an extended metaphor of the fall of modern technical civilization. Życie po życiu (Life after life), apart from death, tells also about resurrection of things (biblical context of the truly intriguing title of the series of simple, unpretentious photographs is another mater which needs consideration). Wilczyk’s altas proves perceptiveness of the author of the photographs, but also, or maybe first of all, proves the presence of people, creativity of anonymous creators, who out of mass-produced vehicles could make objects amazing with their surreal absurd, because how in other then artistic categories one can describe these color forms made of twisted metal levitating a few meters above the ground. Not very pretty objects, incorporated in the landscape, blow up and revolutionize capitalistic reality. It is enough to notice how different these strange advertisement carriers are from the standards of global agencies preparing marketing strategies for firms, in order to realize their subversive potential. Car fetishes, former owners cannot abandon, transform into side roads monuments, poetic collages, poor relatives of stylized advertisements of motor business, completely magical objects, Barthes wrote about, however serving capitalistic society, as well as creative ambitions of individuals.

 

*Usually colloquial names of cars which used to be popular in the Eastern bloc countries.