...We are immaterial beings, despite the pretence of materiality. A human being is a sort of ENERGY CONCENTRATION, which for the duration of one's life serves in this dimension, in this time-space. DÜRER - it is such powerful module, which absorbs other areas. REINCARNATION is the superior space. And then comes in ANDRZEJ DUDEK- DÜRER AS A LIVING SCULPTURE, followed by appearance of various MEDIA, which accompany and document - VIDEO, PHOTOGRAPHY, GRAPHIC ARTS, PAINTING, PERFORMANCE."¹

      Which art discipline is the essence of the artistic work of Andrzej Dudek-Dürer, who is known, but first and foremost perceived by art critics, as an eccentric? Is performance the main axis of his creation? How is he appraised by art critics and observers of his activities? What sense does make his practicing of traditional techniques as well, such as graphic art? Does his art belong to the scope of neo-avant-garde tradition, or - to the contrary - it develops in the former art paradigm? My deliberations are dedicated primarily to some less known photography and video works, and consequently they will serve to answer some of the aforementioned questions.²

I. Photography as a mirror of soul and self

      The departure point for his creative work is a traumatic personal experience of the late 1960-ties referenced and described in numerous texts about the artist, and a search for a way out from spiritual void. It was when he took interest in the Far East philosophy and begun to practice yoga and then to play on his self-made sitar (1974). It was supported, as he says, mainly by meditation, which, what the artist himself has underlined, is a syncretic combination of a number of major global religions' spiritual aspects. It is meditation, which has been the keystone and the power that stimulates his personality and the activity inseparably related to him - anywhere and anyplace. If asked whether he is a Christian, he would certainly answer "yes, I am a Christian".³ Yoga, in his treatment, concerns his whole life, including its aspects such as cloths, food, and cultivation of plants.
      An important premise of his creation is focus on himself, which may be identified as egocentrism, and even narcissism.⁴ He has focused his entire photographic work on self-portrait, which until the 1990-ties was a kind of a mirror that reflected his real image opening to the area of psyche and sub-consciousness. His photography communicates not only changed physis, because this is not bios, which it is all about, but permanent struggle with own fears, obsessions, or demons that lie in wait in the darkness of sub-consciousness. Some allusions and references appear there not only to Albrecht Dürer's persona, but also to the Crucified Christ! Isn't there an act of excess and a bit of blasphemy in such message? It all depends on motives and intentions. They are religious in this case, contrary to, for instance, the 1980-ties and 1990-ties work of Czech photographer Jan Saudek.

1. In the shadow of pictorialism

      Before he got closer to the modernistic formation, Andrzej Dudek-Dürer had been successfully exploring media capabilities of so called noble techniques, in which he was trying to realise himself, partly being a modern artist, who employed the trick photography principle. Why it was so? Since the mid-1960 and in the early 1970-ties the artist produced works in these techniques, which were then continued in Wrocław as a legacy of experiences from the era between the I and II World Wars, mainly of artists associated with the Lvov Photographic Society, and Witold Romer's scientific work. In the 1950-ties and 1960-ties Wrocław had become the Polish centre of pictorial techniques' practicing, since many artists, such as Bronisław Kupiec, Kazimierz Czobaniuk, or Henryk Derczyński, considered it a principal opportunity for "real photography" development. They were lacking, however, the ideas that Dudek-Dürer had already possessed.
      In 1965 Dudek-Dürer created his first work, Autoportrety-Przekształcenia [Self-portraits-Transformations], in which solarisation and isohelia techniques were used. The artist's youthful face resembles a girlish one a little, which now, at least for a moment, may seem surprising. But it also reminds of another stereotype, so appreciated by surrealists, that involves exploration of still infantile womanliness, which at the same time gets closer to a masculine idea and was best exemplified by Claude Cahun herself, Breton's active associate in the 1930-ties.
     He procured very important works, until now commonly unknown, in his proprietary chromate technique based on so called carpenter's glue. I find them essential also from the post-modern theory's and art's perspective, because they show not only unconventionally photographed acts, some images more or less erotic, but also passionate desires that everyone must struggle with. Strange are these acts, and even - in view of the surrealism and symbolism theory - weird, because they show how close eroticism and religion may coexist, interpreted by an artist as the desire to posses. Yet another feature of the works is an unusual combination of the traditional with the modern, and even the iconoclastic.
     Auto... Destrukcje [Auto.Destructions] (1971) reveal that religious issues, as well as dilemmas of own identity and soul (self), combined with painful personal events may be dangerous for psyche. It is evident, for instance, in a work in the series that pictures the artist's expressive silhouette, salvation for which may only be in spiritual life and prayer. Therefore already in 1973 he presented performance Autoukrzyżowanie Self-crucifixion], which was supposed to help first and foremost Dudek-Dürer himself, and the whole world only thereafter. This work's context is dramatic and it relates to the death of his brother Józef, who died in an accident, like their father before. On the other hand in Dudek-Dürer's work there appears a Jungesque motif of a shadow, a diabolic character, which may result from various dark forces' rising to power within the artist himself. It can be clearly seen in a lost space object from the series entitled Kto miłuje życie swe..., [Who loves own life.] 70 x 70 cm x 12 cm, (space object, bromine photography; 1974), where photographs were employed and their arrangement itself created illusion of lenses' use, quite interestingly, particularly in the scope of the op-art and kinetic art tradition.
     Other works in the glue technique present a fantastic and at the same time apocalyptic urban landscape (Modlitwa o coś [A prayer for something]). An old, historical architecture, a carrier of specific meanings, was combined with a vigorous and cacophonous colour palette of purples and reds. These works are important also for other reasons; they evidence will to search for new formal and technical solutions, combining in itself the notions of tradition and modernity, which shall become one of the major features of Dudek-Dürer's intermedia creations.
     In Odczyniania [Spell breaking] (1976) of unusual, simply hellish colours, he fights by prayer, like a medieval saint, with the inferno that penetrates the whole space, like in Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad's famous story. A few photographs from the series have an extraordinary power of imagining, resulting from the scene's reality, despite its dreamlike atmosphere. A gesture of prayer, of crucifixion executed amidst predominant fragments - sculpture legs, showing traces left by a human being and the humanistic heritage thereof - is unusually suggestive. But not everything has been lost.; such reflection also follows from reading/apprehension of these extraordinary works.
     In this religious context here comes yet another series, Kuszenie nie świętego Andrzeja [The Temptation of not St. Andrew], where the naked artist's figure in a prayer gesture, similar to the medieval St. Anthony the Hermit, was exposed to allurements of the material world. Only prayer gives a shelter and a chance to survive. That way the artist continues the genuine search subsisting in religiousness since the Late Antiquity, and then levelled or simply annulled in the modern and contemporary times.
     In 1977 Dudek-Dürer produced three outstanding black and white trick photographs that presented his own "cut off" heads, resembling stone sculptures frozen in no-time, like cut off from the body and resting in grass. They constitute a fixed element that reappears on each photograph.⁵ The series consists of three pieces; their common motif is the image of heads with closed eyes. Why this triptych is so amazing? The work starts with a romantic, even if a little apocalyptic, view of a sunset over Wrocław. The prevailing elements of the next photograph are hands in a prayer gesture that express an act of humility and request at the same time. On the last one the artist's legs symbolise the Crucified Christ. Can they be Dudek-Dürer's and Christ's legs at the same time? It appears to be a contradiction, but I think that there is none in this case. Two images and notions of religious relevance have been combined there. Eventually Christ became a man to gain understanding of man's fate and pain of existence, to get to know the "hell on earth".
     The artist's works from the 1960-ties and 1970-ties once again allow revaluating the judgement of the Polish photography of the period. The artists, who addressed religious issues in an interesting way, like Adam Bujak did, include also Dudek-Dürer. I'm convinced that his works are among those most important for the output of the Polish photography of the time, somehow close to Zofia Rydet's trick photography from the late 1960-ties and early 1970-ties displayed at the Wystawa fotografii subiektywnej [Subjective Photography Exhibition] and Fotografowie poszukujący [Searching Photographers] exhibitions. But firstly - Dudek-Dürer's work, presented to a narrow audience, was not commonly known, and secondly - members of the Union of Polish Art Photographers, successors of Jan Bułhak'a and Witold Romer's idea, didn't want to admit that art may express extreme psychic states reaching to the most secret deposits of sub-consciousness.

2. Being modern. In the photo-medialism circle

     In the 1970-ties and 1980-ties Dudek-Dürer's work got definitely closer to the neo-avant-garde formation, very strong then in Wrocław, the nucleus of which were the Permafo group and gallery, although the number of distinguished artist associated with the neo-avant-garde formation was impressive. Ideas close to it may be recognised in the 1970-ties in the works of Jerzy Rosołowicz, Zdzisław Jurkiewicz, and particularly of Kryspin Sawicz, who was interested in the self-portrait tautology issues. The 1980-ties works of Wacław Ropiecki, which were exhibited in Poland until the early 1990-ties when the artist was a travelling salesman of his works, represent an attitude of spiritual self-realisation with focus on physiognomy, so closed to Dudek-Durer.
     In the 1980-ties and 1990-ties photography had many roles in Dudek-Dürer's concept:
1) An autonomous concept that develops ideas around an image, identity and psychic transformation, as well as a fine art of photo-medium relevance,
2) A component of performance, whereby the artist's photographs filled up the gallery space, substituting for sound recordings. Photography was later replaced by video in this capacity. Also here should be situated all photographs created in the "living sculpture" aspect and derivative from it, such as the "art of shoes", "art of trousers", etc. typically transformed into a costume of digital print, importance of which as a form of image recording was growing since the late 190-ties.⁶
3) A component of graphic art - digital prints, which, similar to video films, were subject to processing that leveraged on the medium's specifics, including liking for geometric forms such as circle, rectangle, and square, an example of very interesting work may be Cisza aż po grób [Silence up to grave] (1996);
4) Essential is also the use of reproductions of Albrecht Dürer images, painted self-portraits often supplemented with own interventions to change their original expression (e.g. Apokalipsa w tęczowej spirali [Apocalypse in Rainbow Spiral],1990).
     The most important works were created within the first concept's framework. They represent static and staging-wise "simple" self-portraits.⁷
     Autoportret zmultiplikowany [Multiplied Selfportrait] consists of static images that resemble stills from the Mental Steps movie. These images are disturbing; they evidence probability of every identity's and psyche's decay. The identity disintegration process known from Far-Eastern meditation may be dangerous however, which was described by Mircea Eliade in his story Doctor Honnenbeger's Secret.
     In the 1970-ties also trick photographs were created as an effect of poetic conceptualism (e.g. Zdzisław Jurkiewcz) or visual poetry, an outstanding representative of which has turned out Stanisław Dródż. Another example is a set of three photographs Ingerencja [Interference], which included also an element of combination and indefinite journey in time and space.
     At least a few dozen self-portraits were procured at that time that recorded a slow or quick transformation of the author's physical features. The artist watches himself in camera lenses like in a mirror. These pictures do not pretend to be progressive, upsetting, or ironic. They feature simplicity and authenticity of the presented situations, despite showing different stretches of time on subsequent pictures. This type of attitude manifested in the Polish photography first in the work of Wiesław Hudon, and then of Andrzej and Natalia Lachowicz. But in the case of Dudek-Dürer we are confronted with a new quality, obviously resembling also the attitude of Joseph Buys, who could use every situation and moment for his own original artistic concept. He was looking for his cultural and religious origins neither in Bonn, nor in New York City, but on the outskirts of Europe, as well as in Satanism. Using virtually every means (such as being busted by the police for instance) and every form he could freely materialise his own formulas and concepts.

Postmodernism times

     Postmodernism is a theoretical reflection involving a changed approach to the arts and culture based on revealing new aspects (feminism, homosexualism), or rules, which could not have been hitherto noticed, or properly interpreted, because of a political state's repressiveness. This is also creative work that refers to approval of the "alien" and of multicultural equality of all cultures.
      Dudek-Dürer's photography is to an extent independent of the fashions and conventions that took over in the 1990-ties and are still developing. But not entirely so. If postmodernism is interpreted also as an art that employs state of the art technologies for digital processing of photographs and video, then its influence may be identified also in Dudek-Dürer's work.
     In the 1990-ties and now he has consciously explored new computer-aided editing capabilities (e.g. Autoobserwato I ver. III.). He is interested not only in a face, but also in individual "live" geometric forms, including the process of development and disappearance of an image as of potentially every visualised form. This type of work stems from Escher's graphics and - earlier - from paintings of Salvador Dali, as well as of painters of the Baroque (Momper) and even Renaissance (Hans Holbein the Younger, Andrea Mantegna) eras. But now it is also a popular entertainment promoted by illustrated magazines that publish so called impossible figures testing our visual perception. But Dudek-Dürer uses it to convey the permanent transformation idea, the law of never-ending karma (Analogie II, III, IV [Analogies II, III, IV). Therefore he not only successfully combines different realities (Apokaliptyczna identyfikacja I [Apocalyptic Identification I], 2002 and particularly Apokaliptyczna identyfikacja IV [Apocalyptic Identification IV]), but also goes out of the geometric abstraction tradition's schematism and penetrates into photography's border areas, in technology terms migrating to graphic art, although the point of departure - or, more precisely, one of such points - was photography.

II. Video as a record of the never-ending road through meanders of life and art

1. Early movies (1980-ties until ca. 2000).

      Dudek-Dürer's video works have not been yet commented, although he's been active in the field already since the early 1980-ties. It is also ignored in principal studies on the Polish video art.⁸ It results from similar premises that have been at work with regard to photography. Dudek-Dürer follows his own path only, creates his own convention within the visual video language, which indicates relationships with photography first and foremost, but also with graphic art. What's important, his film works do not fit in any stream of the Polish art and that's why most of them have remained unknown.
      Originally his interest in video related to performance documentation (Meditation on Copyright 4, 1983) and his journeys, particularly significant of which was the 1989 trip to Australia. Since then he has independently produced his first films. For me important is Nothing. The picture is very static; it allows another view to passing by of time, which runs very slowly. It is manifested by very slowly moving clouds in the sky. This motif shall reappear also in other films produced already in the 2000-ties.
     Sensitive Rail... and Stairs exploit the motif of travel, perhaps the most characteristic theme of his work. He is a wanderer of the romantic type, who discovers visual states, beautiful, although potentially concealing not only fading but also passing away, as it can be seen in Cemetery, a full of melancholy work that exploits technical functionality of image multiplication and downsizing. It all concentrates there in the rectangle form, which - according to Carl Gustav Jung's theory presented in his book Archetypes and Symbols - is a symbolic form, to which evil has been adopted, so far rejected or marginalised in the Christian religion and art, which is expressed by the triangle form representing the Holy Trinity idea.⁹
     The road motif prevails in these works, related to travels, the world's changeability and elusivity. Everything is transient; there are no dramatic events and developments. All elements of the visible and recorded on magnetic tape world described above shall reappear in the next period.

2. Art is a form of meditation¹⁰. Video of the 2000-ties

      The art related to meditation, or constituting a form thereof, is unpopular, even among artists associated with Zen, although it has had many great exponents, such as painter Marc Tobey, or photographer Minor White. Also in some Joseph Beuys' works, and - first and foremost - statements an attempt at such attitude could be identified (actions: How To Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, Coyote)
      An example of such artistic attitude is Dudek-Dürer's film Border. What the title border is? Or perhaps it has disappeared following fading away contours of the world based on reproduction and cultural fiction, which manifests in the famous Statue of Liberty of 1886 appearing at the film's beginning and ending. Its fictionality is also evidenced by the fact that few people know that French sculptor F. Bartholdi created it. It does not represent the idea of liberty really, because it is an "artificial creation". Freedom and liberation are achieved through meditation. We can see the figure of the artists, who penetrates the whole world, also some places that are unreal and untrue because procured by filming a photographic reproduction. It is a reflective work, based upon the principle of image's destruction and construction, and of mutual penetration of a number of realities.
     Mental Steps is a kind of photography that is variable in time/space, albeit also interpenetrating other realities. The film presents a multiplied portrait, in a sense of decay of a single identity (personality), which burns out its material envelope.
     Trans Trip addresses the need to meditate in any conditions and circumstances, also while sipping tea or visiting a WC. Anything may be meditated over, a cup of tea with an image of fish as well. Then the only reality of the world is beginning to fade away, which to an extent is an illusion, and other images and other realities may appear.
     Velocity - dismemberment and integration of all forms in this world has been a perennial principle. Also an artist is an element of an extremely fast changing reality. This is Dudek-Dürer's most dynamic and formally most abstract film. Only sometimes we can see in it some elements of the reality as we know it, such as a wall with graffiti or a view of the sky.
     Transfer of Energy is a film that in a symbolic manner presents change of power, "suction" of real human beings and their reality into the "circle of live and death", the Far East formula's basic notion. It starts with a view of a city in unrealistic colours. Again realities superimpose, and one of the components is even surreal, because such is the everyday life. We can see a young man, who carries a sculpture on his head - it is not a theatrical staging but a ritual.
     The point of departure for Tendency was the 2003 Venice Biennale. You can't tell who is advancing who is recessing in a crowd of walking people. Here Dudek-Dürer confronts himself with a sculpture of Charles Ray, a famous US artist. He asks a question: which art form is truer? Is it he, as a "living sculpture", or the realistically formulated naked women sculptured by Ray? Dudek-Dürer has no doubts - he is the right art form! The film starts with a candle flame and ends with the identical frame, which resembles the mood of a photograph from the series Żywioły [Elements] by Zygmunt Rytko, who took a picture of a burning candle against the backdrop of a palm.
     The Trans Wishes I film starts in a beautiful way. We can see a view of a mountain, a pole and clouds arranged in a perfect order - the classic order in terms of the ancient Greece's heritage. It is not disturbed even by clouds that suddenly (by the virtue of the artist's creation) change orientation and flow in the reverse direction. All that is focused in Dudek-Dürer's eye pupil, which rules the world's structure. All is relative, variable, subordinated or related to music, even if music was conceived afterwards as a form that construed the visual world.
     Which movie has provided a bracket of sorts that binds together Dudek-Dürer's entire interest in video? It seems to me that such postulates have been best fulfilled by Invisible Time, the music of which, different than other works of the type, is more apocalyptic. The film shows these advancing and those recessing and vice versa. No one knows which is the movement's right order or form. Is it linear or elliptic, etc? A way out of the situation (where for a moment an advertising board appears that reads "Last Minute") is to remain in the eternal time, in meditation, like does Dudek-Dürer, who, in a conventional manner and by means of movement, creates the form of a circle, around which the artist revolves. The artist seems to say in a delicate manner - remember, "each moment is final, may decide on the form of your future existence". Introduction to shows a fight of everything against all things, even the element of fire, which materialises in various visualisations. The artist himself in his many films tries to show another possibility, which is determined by meditation - a creative maintenance of the world's structure, because this is all it can do.

3. What is a camera?

      The mind of an artist, who uses software of electronic digital cameras, of course. Outwardly his films are wearisome and with repeated motifs. Many viewers can't "get through" their unique form, the more so that the viewers have not understood the issues they address. Dudek-Dürer is an example of an artist, who perfectly controls a camera as a tool, although he applies a somewhat monotonous form deprived of narration and strong dramatic accents, which not entirely corresponds to the typical cinematographic structure.
      Structure
      The structure of his films from his second filming period is very interesting and it resembles the principle known from Władysław Strzemiński's unistic paintings, and works of US "action painters" from the 1950-ties. It is going out of the framework ("over all") of not only our mind, but of the cinematographic narration principle. His films' form is not as much a collage, as it is a trick photography, with tendency to many forms' geometrisation. The structure is free, non-linear, bringing to mind a dream-like world, where reality of motifs can be rarely seen, as they are only supplements.
     Symbols
     Every creative artist seeks new symbolic forms, of course within the framework of the practiced artistic discourse. They will be different in the abstract painting scheme (e.g. Leon Tarasewicz), different in the photographic language (Zygmunt Rytka), and different in a specific formula related to artist's own existence (Roman Opałka). Has Dudek-Dürer found such formula of his own symbolic language? I am convinced that he has. His symbolic representation refers to demonstration of the idea of a life road and a search for the fullness, showing the problem of "burning out" the material body form. Such Dudek-Dürer's own symbols include: an eye, fire, motif of road, energy transformations. Other, earlier forms, such as the "art of shoes", "art of trousers", etc., are incorporated in the language.

What is art, according to Dudek-Durer?

      Is it worth deliberating which form of his work is the most important? I believe that it features intermediality (multimediality), of which Franciszek Chmielowski wrote: "Art has been multimedial for long in the meaning of syncretism of its presentation means and it so remains, especially in the "performing arts" domain. [...] It is likely that the new multimedia art displays a tendency to return to the ideals of art as a spontaneous para-religious process affecting multiple sensory receptors, which art was at the dawn of the European culture. [...] I believe - Chmielowski wrote - that the multimedia art's nature as compared to the former art's nature has not been subject to too far reaching changes and that these changes have been of the evolutionary rather than revolutionary nature. Still art's ability to impersonate, to give shape to new, emerging meanings in the human world has remained its main competence. It is probably art's permanent and indispensable mandate, the function whereby the thing thereto relevant realises. If we had bracketed or annulled its philosophical (ontological and epistemological) mediality and the function of presenting new meanings thereto related - what then would be left of its output? The material bystandership only, a concrete thing which, in Ingarden's aesthetics was coined as "living basis". This term remains valid also with respect to works of new media arts, which - deprived of the meaning conveyance function - have been reduced to the level of electronic toys or gadgets." ¹¹
     It is difficult to answer the question what is the essence of Dudek-Dürer's work - performance, photography, graphic art, or video? Or perhaps he himself as the "living sculpture" idea that unites all forms of his multimedia activities. His moral attitude and orientation to transcendence are worth of the highest respect. Obviously in many artistic disciplines, such as performance, graphic art, photography, or video, Dudek-Dürer has found new aspects that fill up the world of his art, also formal aspects.¹² In a successful manner he develops the perennial issue of the artistic discourse on the obligations of art and artist.
     So what is the art, according to Dudek-Durer? It is he himself and artistic or para-artistic forms he has materialised, because in any situation a work of art may be made of accidental objects, e.g. a box of just consumed pizza. But is it a work of art? Such situations, drawn up at many places of his stay, resemble King Midas' myth, as well as the postulates and practices of Joseph Beuys, who applied similar creative method involving maximum proliferation of creative energy.¹³ But Dudek-Dürer's body of work gives rise to the highest esteem. Sometimes a few young video and performance learners are following his steps, such as meditating Marek Zygmunt, for instance. Painter Andrzej Urbanowicz seems to have been heading the same direction already since the early 1960-ties. This path is worth not only attention, but also cultivation, because "every garden is also your garden".

Krzysztof Jurecki