Witkacy

CHLUST
the Depths of Witkacy’s Subconsciousness
28.09 – 31.10.2023

Chlust [splash] was the name given to the free piano musical improvisations occasionally performed by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. The artist’s friend Roman Jasiński, who was charmed by his acquaintance with Witkacy, described one of the chlust performances at his parents’ house as a ‘terrible improvisation’ for which ‘unfortunately little understanding was shown’, despite the overall successful visit. For the purpose of this exhibition, we have designated the ‘chlust’ as an unplanned, violent and explosively executed musical variant of Witkacy’s equally spontaneous, absurd, and sometimes shocking collected actions, similar to those of the Dadaists and Surrealists.

Some of the photographs documenting these actions can indeed be associated with a programmatic splash or even a reflexive, spontaneous one.

The staged photographs, created from the artist’s earliest years, diverse in form and expression, form an extremely interesting psychological autobiographical story. They can be regarded as a kind of photographic documentation of improvised activities of various kinds, created almost everywhere from different inspirations.

It also includes the photographic registration of the ‘mimic theatre’, which materialised in the form of a series of consecutive expressions and gestures. Although Witkiewicz – the philosopher – photographed as means of relaxation, he included symbolic meanings in these games, and some of these photographs became iconic images of the artist in the public perception.

Witkacy had incredible intuition, sought unconventional solutions in art, was characterised by great ease in decision-making, supported by great passion and diligence. He was extremely active in many fields. With unwavering enthusiasm and openness, he transposed his life into various forms of creativity. Art was his life. Art, in today’s expanded definition, was created everywhere and from everything, and this also applied to social situations. He shunned the monotony of the every day and the mundane in the name of higher objectives and glorified a specific yet vivid way of being. In this way, he elevated ordinary boredom to an even more unbearable “metaphysical boredom”.

His philosophical view of seemingly ordinary phenomena and things provoked reflections in members of the public hitherto not attentive to routine events, created the possibility of a deeper understanding of human existence a glimpse of the painfully existential aspects of human nature inscribed in transience, and offered a new reality.

The philosopher’s play and their result in the form of photographs exceeded many “serious” photographic works of his professional contemporaries. Witkacy’s photographs set completely new perspectives, which were revealed years later in the art of our times.

Works

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