Galeria FF - Zygmunt Rytka.

Zygmunt Rytka's creative work is constantly, and quite justly seen by contemporary researchers of Polish art as the result of the attitude rooted in conceptual, and analytical tradition. His photographs, films, videos as well as installations having been accomplished for over thirty years demonstrate the consistent work while each time making very conscious use of a medium, marking its problems, demonstrate the features seemingly coming from its substance. The artist, building up artistic discourses, full of doubt about aesthetic paradigms, takes up the recognition issue, the capabilities and limitations of media (see the cycles Infinitive Continuity as well as Momentary Objects), which sometimes take on the element of irony (see the cycle Bluff). While doing that the artist unfolds before us, somehow instinctively, constructivist character of the very medium itself, conventionality of the photographic or film medium's objectivity. Such style of creative work leads inevitably to crossing the borders of presence paradigm, therefore the registered object is assumed to be existing totally self-dependently, quite independently of the camera only registering its image, the trace of its existence. Transgression of such paradigm eventually allows to expose and abandon the representation ideology and release the demon of relativism.
      Creating on border-line of media very often takes on the form of acting in intermedia space, in the territory of in-between. Finally, as a result, intermedia or transmedia approach becomes one of the basic strategies used in such activities. Also in Zygmunt Rytka's creations, which is often noticed by the commentators of his artistic works, intermedialism turns out to be the vital attribute of his attitude, as well as of his works, simply achieving the standing of the other (next to conceptualism) basic interpretative context of his creations. Intermedialism in Rytka's works is present in many different ways. In the early stage, the photography, through multiplying single images which were building up one creation, crossed the static uni-perspective treatment, aiming at increased vision, which showing what's presented, impaired, however, the value of perception, and therefore questioning its cognitive worth (see the cycles: Time Divisions and particularly Place Definition). The artist, in the later films, then the videotapes, often limited the dynamics of picture change, in that case actually real (which means incorporated into the work's matter, and not only in the strategy of its perception), building for it the photographic context (see Time at the disposal), or transforming through, for example, merging with performance (see e.g. Retransmission).
      The connection with formerly regarded conceptual strategy is what joins all those ways of intermedialism. As the result of the mutual reference of both those strategies Rytka's realizations acquire not only dynamism taking on material as well as mental forms (meaning appearing only in the viewer's experience), but also the characteristic (particularly for the mature stage of his art) ambivalence, the inner dialogue of the opposing views. His art becomes, therefore, somehow a game between the representation and its negation - surpassing and suppression (the exhibition Neurons and Elements, FF Gallery, May 1998 was a very self-conscious presentation of this dual creative attitude).
      The Dynamic Objects cycle having been realized for already several years also develops within the space of mutual references between the conceptual and intermedia perspectives. The latter one allows for the photography to anchor in the art of installation context. Therefore the works in that cycle develop far beyond the border being their photography base. As the meaningful, direct elements of installations making up the cycle Dynamic Objects there appear, next to the photos, not only the very exhibition space, but also the other, fit into it, non-photographic elements, such as: stones and cord, joining the particular parts and measurements of the piece of art thus in a special way participating in the process of making it all dynamic.
      The process of making Rytka's photo-installations dynamic takes place in the space, where intermedia tactic meets the conceptual strategy. Eventually as the result of the latter one's activity the dynamics and the size of reference range in perception experience undergo the further extension.
      I would like to strongly underline that the strategy of Zygmunt Rytka's discussed works is submitted to the perception experience. Because it is that instance which takes direct responsibility for the progress of the described dynamic process in the creation's development. It is from the recipient's point of view and in her or his thought that Rytka's photo-installations achieve the whole planned goal.
      On the one hand we deal with the material side of the perceived objects. They initiate the perception experience. But if we assume that their material side exists only as the cognitive conjecture, then we will have to accept that we actually deal with initial (assumed) material range of objects place in the exhibition space and mental character of the very experience. Some of the perceived objects have the status of photographic representation and therefore their references appear next to them in the perception experience structure: photographed objects. As both types of objects, as experience elements, have the same status of mental representation, the perceived material photography becomes ontologically equal to the imagined material references - photographed objects. As the result both ranges of assumed presence - perceived and imagined - are both found within the experience, and its so far binary construction becomes the triad one.
      The described above situation doesn't bear the characteristic of a very special event. It crops up every time we deal with the perception of the objects being the representations (of paintings, photography, film, etc.). I have here referred to it as it excellently represents the deep structure of the whole strategy used in the cycle Dynamic Objects.
      The particular installation in this cycle has such a triad structure. They spread among (1) the place where the photographs have been made and where the displayed stones come from (the latter ones are present here both as material object and as objects represented in the photos), (2) the exhibition space, and (3) the world of the viewer's mental perception, the world in which eventually all the relations of those three spheres are determined into one net of references. The assisting analogical time structure overlaps the above described spatial stretch (stretching between the moment that has just passed, the permanence of being, and the moment that is going on now).
      The peculiar energetic vectors co-create the dynamics of their interpenetration: the lines having various status, the lines which additionally join the whole construction. We come across them drawn on the photographically represented objects, on the photographs themselves, on the stones physically present in a gallery on its walls, and last but not least in the shape of a line stretched among them all. They are always the same color (black) always the same thickness, therefore they seem to be the same and only line stretching endlessly throughout all the involved lasting dimensions. Thus the edges of particular photographs stop being the borders of inner worlds, transforming into the borders marking the passages among different spheres. Photo-installations making up the cycle Dynamic Objects find their final (though changing all the time) form of existence in the perceiver's experience. That's where all the time-space dimensions develop, that's where they join and penetrate the spheres that compose them. And that's where their uniqueness is established, the feature acquired by the individual perception act. Therefore the final foundation for the Dynamic Objects to last is the dynamics of awareness which gives its form to an experience as the self-cognitive reflexion.