Stanisław R. Kortyka

It's Flying Over
digital print, 2020

Listening to Reed's Song
digital print, 2020

photographic documentation:

1. Open-air workshop in Lubiatów. Zenon Polus, Jacek Dłużewski, Wojciech Śmigielski

2-4. Select student productions

5. Stanisław R. Kortyka. Listening to Reed's Song

There Was One Such Plein-air Workshop

There was one such plein-air workshop; participants were a group of students of the then Institute of Art and Visual Culture, studying painting in the studio supervised by me and Jacek Dłużewski, and drawing in Zenon Polus' studio. The time is late April 1998, exceptionally beautiful weather, charming environs of Lubiatów on the Sławskie Lake. The workshop was short, only five days. Judging from end results, the participants were an exceptionally gifted group of student which, besides painting, in parallel, performed a task set by Zenon. The plein-air workshop participants were supposed to perform “an action en plein air”. Outcomes were outstanding and astonishing in their inventiveness as well as simplicity of execution. Walking around a fairly vast area (particular 'actions' were sometimes quite distant from each other), one could admire their invention, choice of materials required to realise ideas and, most of all, interesting contexts of object in the natural environment. As I was documenting (fortunately, the session was rather successful), I realised how creative a drawing studio can be, when its is as open and as widening of perspectives on art, its creational possibilities, and courage in taking artistic decisions.

The creative atmosphere of our Lubiatów meeting could not leave even me indifferent to the task set by Zenon: so I proposed also my 'seeing' of the problem. When we talked with Zenon about possibilities of employing actions in nature as a proposal for initiating a habilitation procedure, he then spoke about inspirations and magic of such places as his Kosobudki. There was a lot in that conversation about … twigs (sic!).

Now, with a view to the exhibition dedicated to Zenon, I produced a kind of garden installation, alluding to that conversation many years ago. It is its continuation

Stanisław R. Kortyka