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Agnieszka Wojewoda: Some theorists claim that photography can be a subversive medium, not even when it petrifies, stigmatises or moves, but when – instead of a visual shock – it simply gives us food for thought. I think that this is exactly the impact of your works... Is that a deliberate effect?
Wojciech Gilewicz: I consider photography to be a peculiar medium, since – on the one hand – it produces an illusion of reality, appears as a truthful and faithful representation of what we see, but – on the other – it deceives us. Photography, like any other medium, can be economical with the truth and invite things that don’t fit within reality or don’t match it in any way whatsoever.
Agnieszka Wojewoda: Yet your illusions seem somewhat doubled... Not only does the sheer photography create unreal situations, since it doesn’t represent an instant that was ‘for real’, but you also enhance the spectres or – as Barthes put it – the hallucinogenic through posing and staging. Where does this need come from?
Wojciech Gilewicz: It stems from the premises of the project in question. I create situations that pertain to particular emotions therefore situations which seem true, since they take place in particular interiors, at the same time featuring circumstances that never existed. It does not, however, rely on digital photography and Photoshop editing, but on the photographic film technique, which bears the most direct reference to the very tradition of the medium – I use a dual-image filter. Hence, it is not any kind of manipulation if we are dealing with a single, evenly exposed negative frame.
Agnieszka Wojewoda: What do you want to achieve by taking photographs of situations that never happened?
Wojciech Gilewicz: It may also be approached in a slightly different manner... Do notice that between the figures in the photos there is always a kind of dead zone. As a result, you see that the two persons can never touch, meet or engage in any physical contact. What emerges is a moment of suspension. Emotions are generated, but also somewhat inhibited, suspended, which causes them to accumulate. It brings about a certain discomfort and anticipation...
Agnieszka Wojewoda: Looking at your photographs, I can see excruciating solitude stemming from the fact that when observing others, we mainly see ourselves. For me, it evoked the discovery that Narcissus made. After all, we don’t notice in others what we don’t have ourselves, and we love in others mainly our own image, which they reflect like the surface of water. However when we attempt to get closer, the illusion disappears. So does the inability to achieve proximity with another man have a liberating or rather depressive potential?
Wojciech Gilewicz: I wouldn’t be so reserved about it, the series is also somewhat autobiographical, although I don’t strive to give it such interpretation. I don’t think these stories pertain exclusively to me, since as a matter of fact, any story depicted in art eventually acquires a universal character. Our small experiences amount to one universal experience and the role of artists is only to depict it and provide it with a name. Talking about solitude, conversations with oneself, looking at oneself and constant self-evaluation – these are all common pattern of reactions and emotions. It is nothing new. What I do is just a visualisation and imaging, but I have to admit that I’m carrying it out in an illusory manner, since people who saw these works often said: ‘This is the other one’. My high school class head teacher even said recently: ‘This is Marcin’, and Marcin was in fact my colleague. So these works might be said to contain a certain trap.
Agnieszka Wojewoda: I would like to return to the theme of doubling in your photographs. One of the ‘models’ is looking at the other carefully and there is a visible distance between the two. I am constantly considering what this distance might be. Does it stem from the fear of breaking the illusion? Since when we get more intimate with other people, our infatuation disappears, somewhat shaking what we imagine. Or is the distance only a method of gaining self-awareness?
Wojciech Gilewicz: The distance may stem from the sense of non-fulfilment. Because I don’t believe in the possibility of embracing the entire truth. The emerging estrangement and suspension are feelings we can never get rid of. There are no ultimate truths and no definitive judgments. It’s simply impossible. Therefore the distance is the state of a certain suspension. And even though I try to convey something and create a sort of relation between the people, it is all illusion, which never really happened. This restraint and these limitations are explicitly marked.
Agnieszka Wojewoda: So, after all, you concentrate on self-awareness?
Wojciech Gilewicz: Well, yes, although I would gladly refrain from labelling things in my photographs, as it immediately triggers difficulties and doubts of interpretation. For instance – if a photograph features a flower or any other object, it raises the questions about its symbolic value. But my aim is different. For me, it is a series marked for intuition. And that’s why I cannot determine the precise meanings behind every object, detail or colour in my photographs. Most often it is the case that something simply attracts my attention, and there is more intuition to it than reasoning and deliberate situation arrangement. The more so that I have an emotional link with the interiors in the photos. This is where I live and move, on a more or less permanent basis. This is not artificial stage design.
Agnieszka Wojewoda: Do the daily, even trivial activities that you present express contemplation of everyday life? What does it mean for you to celebrate the ordinary?
Wojciech Gilewicz: I should begin with the inspiration for the project. I am a painter and for very long I treated this series as a certain addition to what I always investigated and evoked in terms of painting. However, my paintings never feature any figures whatsoever, humans don’t receive a representation. What prevails are rather conceptual, sometimes even quite hermetic considerations. Yet somewhere deep in me, there was a need to also present humans. Eventually, at some point I concluded that I lacked personal references... And the photography technique which I use demands long and humdrum work, photo sessions lasting at least two or three hours. It would be difficult to convince another person to pose. Therefore I became the best subject matter for myself, and the best material.
Agnieszka Wojewoda: Yet another reason to take photos of yourself?
Wojciech Gilewicz: Yes, but at the same time, the moment comes when a given form expires and embarks on an evolution of sorts, since, after all, how long can you register situations taking place in apartments and houses? For some time now, I have been practising yoga, which gives my body an unbelievable potential. It is the more so intriguing that, for me, there is an erotic element to yoga... The current photos are more monochromatic and more austere, and at the same time they present the endless possibilities of what one can do with their bodies and with themselves, also in terms of mentality. I am astonished when I observe the incredible things that the yoga instructors at my classes are able to perform. What emerges in this sphere is also the concept of the border of impossibility, although it remains at somewhat different levels.
Agnieszka Wojewoda: Some find your photographs narcissistic? Do you agree?
Wojciech Gilewicz: I can easily imagine such perception. Any interpretation is fair. If you do something publicly, anybody can say it’s narcissistic, in one way or another. There are no restrictions on understanding. And do you consider it a reproach?
Agnieszka Wojewoda: No....
Wojciech Gilewicz: If an artist resolves to use his own face and body, he performs a kind of exhibitionist act. Naturally, it must invite some aspect of narcissism...
Agnieszka Wojewoda: I would also like to return to the theme of ‘love for the self’…
Wojciech Gilewicz: I wouldn’t call it that way. It is rather a way of transgressing something, even not a taboo, since it’s way too heavy a notion... It is a manner of rendering certain situations more familiar, including the bodily acts that repose in human unconsciousness. I remember being asked once about the potential paths of interpreting these photographs and it occurred to me that it might be interesting for myself to have them analysed from the psychological and psychotherapeutic point of view. Do notice that we, members of the art world, are surrounded by people familiar with or emotionally linked with art, and we keep talking of symbols and identity. I think it might be interesting to hear what somebody from outside the world of art would say, looking from a very different perspective.
Agnieszka Wojewoda: I am not, actually, that connected with art... And when I look at the photographs, I notice an acute need of searching for truth about another person, whereas having found it, we realise that it is ourselves that we are looking for. Then the discomfort settles in because we see in the other the things that we don’t accept in ourselves. They start to itch and disturb. Nevertheless, finding out who we are, what we are looking for is impossible without getting in touch with people. Therefore I was very much intrigued by the distance marked in the photographs... Is it indispensable? Because, on the other hand, transgressing this demarcation line triggers incorporation and possessiveness. So isn’t it better to become a Narcissus in love and live a tranquil life than to approach the water surface and break the illusion? Is this level of awareness everything the limit of what we can find out or is it something to be transgressed?
Wojciech Gilewicz: To some extent, our conservation constantly revolves around one subject, although we’re not being quite explicit about it – homosexuality. Yet the distance which appears in the photographs is a tension and an unrealised encounter, since the two figures can never touch... For me, it is the essence of homosexuality. Frankly speaking, I think it can be reduced to desire for the self, which can never be satisfied and bring a sense of fulfilment.
Agnieszka Wojewoda: Why?
Wojciech Gilewicz: Because you cannot desire yourself and be satisfied. Homosexuality limits love to one sex, therefore your own sex becomes a reference point for your desire, putting you in the position of the object of desire. At the same time, the distance remains in the photographs, there is a dead zone, where the men cannot meet for the simple reason of technological limitations. But still, it is me in the photographs, although I try to make myself look different, which raises the question: ‘who is the other?’. I used to have long hair, with which I could do a lot to differentiate the figures visually. So there was a constant making up of identity for the models going on. I consider the interpretation with reference to homosexual love equally valid for these photographs.
Agnieszka Wojewoda: But you’re not trying to convey that homoerotic love is immature?
Wojciech Gilewicz: No, I don’t think that. It is just one of potential avenues of analysis. One can perceive the photographs in terms of narcissistic love, homoerotic love, but also the search for one’s own identity or transgressing the borders imposed by the medium.
Roman Lewandowski: The themes of identity, attempts at domesticating spaces and giving them a definition – they echo in our conversation... However, in your works, it all happens even at the level of the sheer medium, since in your projects you merged different media e.g. painting and photography, or you created installations in public spaces, which are a testimony of such transgressions... Here, at the Baltic Gallery of Art, you show video works and photographs, which – as it turns out – are also somehow interlinked. On the one hand, I can see a search for your own artistic vernacular, but on the other, I observe no attempts to renounce the faith in conveying certain truths with traditional media such as photography and painting... What strikes me is a deep trust in the explanatory potential of art, which nowadays seems rather rare...
Wojciech Gilewicz: I rather think that it stems from my willingness to analyse certain things anew. To remain in the realm of traditional media or techniques constitutes both an attempt to break the limits and to demonstrate that something can be actually said by their means, and that it doesn’t matter in any way whatever whether we use a computer or paints. Progress in art has a different expression, in my opinion. I studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, which is universally considered to be modern and liberal. And because I have always had a perverse side, I resolved to work with traditional technique of oil on canvas in order to transgress it and show something really modern. Hence I would come up with an invisible painting after a week of work... A question arises about how to treat a painting whose exhibition is connected with the function of a pavement flagstone in the cityscape. Is it a genuine object or does it belong to the realm of art history, since it bears traces of action painting or another genre of abstract art? What matters to me is that all these considerations are conducted within the field of the most traditional painting technique.
Roman Lewandowski: Exactly... These installations are of a quasi-painting character, they are marked for the ephemeral and the transient. Does this temporariness amount to ascertaining a given status quo – that everything changes and passes away, or was your message a different one?
Wojciech Gilewicz: Ephemeral? Why do you consider them ephemeral?
Roman Lewandowski: Because these works are subject to the impact of weather conditions, therefore they perform a sort of work and develop.
Wojciech Gilewicz: I would agree that they constantly create, work and remain in incessant action, but not that they are ephemeral. It stems from the fact that my works change naturally and are subject to the same processes as the urban tissue. Therefore any such painting lives a different live from those fixed to and associated with a white gallery wall or somebody’s living room.
Roman Lewandowski: In that case, what does it mean? Is it only about embellishing public space or do you also wish to leave your individual tag?
Wojciech Gilewicz: It’s like setting a trap... Somebody told me in Wrocław that he felt disturbed and threatened by my paintings. Walking down Kuźnicza St., he found out from a simple map that there were 12 paintings hidden on his way. In some way, it may shake the sense of security. Maybe this is what art is all about?
Roman Lewandowski: It’s important and intriguing.... A few years ago, correct me if I’m wrong, you carried out a project in Paris, which involved sending out a visual message about the location of various artefacts within a space to the audience, whose task was to trace them...
Wojciech Gilewicz: It was as follows: you entered the gallery through a park, where you later had to return, but having been told in the meantime that you are to look for something, and then it turned out that you had stepped on a painting before...
Roman Lewandowski: Thus you put the audience in both a flaneur and a voyeur position...
Wojciech Gilewicz: And that’s good, isn’t it?
Roman Lewandowski: I also wanted to ask you about your motivation, since it is very important what function this sort of action actually serves. Do you intend to refresh reception and perception of the audience, utterly bored with the ubiquitous ‘image’?
Wojciech Gilewicz: Of course, we are flooded with images and we don’t even now what to do with them anymore and how to process them mentally. Yet it seems to me that there is a certain paradox to what I do because, even though I make new paintings, I ‘produce’ them in such a way so as to render them ‘invisible’... I am a painter who enters the urban space and creates from nature, since I paint right on the streets. One can say that I produce things that become invisible. Yet if something is invisible, does it mean that it does not exist?
Roman Lewandowski: This polar opposition and distance between the visible and the invisible, and of course the mechanism of semantic traps that you set, is – to my mind – a fair way to refresh the manner of thinking about art and the world. It triggers tension and raises questions about the sense of the art of painting in a seemingly post-painting era, dominated by invisible interfaces.... Is that the matter? Or do you simply follow your intuition?
Wojciech Gilewicz: Certainly. But to conclude our conversation, I’d like to return to the 9-month long project in Wrocław. The paintings that I merged with the urban tissue, after all they went through and after the entire process of “stretching” the medium, made their way onto white gallery walls. And then they could also make it to somebody’s house. Thus we could return to the aesthetic-narrative-abstract function of paintings.
The interview was conducted during the exhibition of Wojciech Gilewicz’s works ‘Them’ at the Baltic Gallery
of Art / Witches’ Tower in Słupsk, December 2007.
