Jarosław Kozłowski (b. 1945), one of the most important figures of Polish conceptual art, has been subject to new studies during recent years, starting with his retrospective exhibition in Kraków and Toruń between 2015 and 2017. Kozłowski’s early practice, dating from 1965 up to 1971, has been recontextualized in the light of his interest in existentialist literature and philosophy. The terms such as ‘scopophobia’ and ‘materialist conceptualism’ proposed as a way to explain his transition from oppressive, surrealist work to conceptualism.
The paper expands on these studies, proposing instead a broader set of references to examine artist’s relation to problems of presence and matter. Following the careful analysis of Kozłowski’s recently uncovered diploma from 1968, it focuses on the convergence of scientific, literary, philosophical and artistic interests in shaping his thought. Thus, the central question of the diploma is revealed to be the one about the possibility of transcending the individualistic existentialism of Sartre and Camus’ absurdism, towards a new definition of human presence in contemporary reality. That entails the acknowledgement of reciprocity, a ‘dialectical relationship’ between the world of inert matter and the perceiving consciousness. Kozłowski draws on the concepts from cybernetics, quantum physics and psychoanalysis to explain the recent turn towards the materiality in the work of French ‘nouveau realisme’ movement, as well as American pop-art. Unlike their representatives however, his aim is not to divorce his practice from existential questions, but rather to force them back into the world of objects.
The paper examines works from Kozłowski’s early period to show the growing preoccupation with making matter share in the process of thinking, to imbue it with a presence that is both his own and external to him. From the brutal, blood-stained early works on paper to the subtle dialectics of A Set (1971) a trajectory is sketched out in which the problem of the object versus the subject is examined and deconstructed. Unlike Robert Smithson’s pessimistic ‘quiet catastrophe of mind and matter’, Kozłowski creates a delicate web of interconnected presences that linger on a process of recovering thought from the object and of object becoming the agent of thought. The underlying transformation is argued to be a personal one as well: the artist slowly emerging out of isolation and developing ways to create works that do not simply attack the audience like in An Arrangement (1967), but actively engage it in the creative process.
The artist’s work is examined in comparison with other figures of Polish conceptualism, especially Włodzimierz Borowski’s practice that involved an intense preoccupation with the figure of the demiurgic artist and subsequent deconstruction of it. Thus, the paper aims to show how in the Central European context, a different strand of conceptualism has emerged, one that expands the usual scope of inspirations of conceptualism to deal with the intellectual and existential crisis of the post-Second World War period.
key words: conceptualism, materiality, existentialism, art and science
Sources:
J. Kozłowski, Obecność człowieka w świecie i sztuce współczesnej, 1968 - unpublished diploma from the artist's personal archive
Ł. Żuchowski, Między autotematyzmem a analizą medium – interdyscyplinarne interpretacje twórczości Jarosława Kozłowskiego z lat 1965-71, 2017 - unpublished thesis defended under the tutorship of prof. Iwona Luba at the University of Warsaw
Books:
Cudzysłowy, ed. Bożena Czubak, Warszawa 2010
Galeria OdNOWA 1964-1969, ed. Piotr Piotrowski, Poznań 1993
Jarosław Kozłowski. Doznania rzeczywistości i praktyki konceptualne, cat. exhib. Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej „Znaki Czasu” w Toruniu 17.10.2105-3.01.2016 and Muzeum Sztuki Współczesnej w Krakowie MOCAK 21.10.2016-2.04.2017, ed. Jarosław Kozłowski, Natalia Brandt, Toruń 2015
Jarosław Kozłowski. Neither East Nor West, Neither North Nor South, ed. Bożena Czubak, Warszawa 2017
J. Kozłowski, J. Ludwiński, Collages, „Odra” 1968, nr 11 (93), p. 69-72
L. Nader, Konceptualizm w PRL, Warszawa 2009
P. Piotrowski, Awangarda w cieniu Jałty. Sztuka i polityka w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej 1945-1989, Poznań 2005
P. Piotrowski, Globalny NETwork. W stronę porównawczej historii sztuki , in: „Artium Quaestiones” XXV: 2014, p. 139-175
P. Piotrowski, Znaczenia modernizmu. W stronę sztuki polskiej po 1945 roku, Poznań 1999
A. Turowski, Aranżacje J. Kozłowskiego, „Współczesność” 1969, nr 4 (283), p. 8
Ł. Żuchowski, Naśladownictwo i kontekst – Zbiór oraz Aparat Jarosława Kozłowskiego w perspektywie egzystencjalnej, Lublin 2020, p. 66-76
Łukasz Żuchowski, doctoral student at the Institute of Art History at University of Warsaw. He is currently working on a PhD thesis related to Xawery Dunikowski and the problems of the fourth dimension in Polish modernist and avant-garde art. His main interests are modern and contemporary art and science and contemporary relationships between art and counterculture. He has published his articles in the publications of the National Museum in Warsaw and the University of Warsaw.
This paper focuses on the early work of the Polish Conceptual artist Jaroslaw Kozlowski. It highlights how Kozlowski opened himself up to the idea that embodying thought in a work of art is necessarily a dialectical process, which must take into account the realization that matter also “thinks” and that it is essential to preserve the externality of matter’s thought in the finished piece. Situating Kozlowski in the context of Polish Conceptualism, I also aim to show how a different strand of Conceptual art emerged in Central Europe, which was shaped by the intellectual and existential crisis of the postwar."