Stanislaw Wejman. Graphic. Retrospective
Description:
Stanislaw Wejman, one of Poland's most outstanding contemporary graphic artists, is one of those artists who have never allowed themselves to be caught up in a web of fashions, notions and classifications.
A professor at Krakow's Academy of Fine Arts, a master of his craft and a teacher, he has remained faithful to printmaking all his life - a medium requiring not only discipline and concentration, but also humility towards the matter. In an age of acceleration, Wejman moves unhurriedly, but consistently, in his own rhythm - Truchtem, and this title of one of his works becomes a metaphor for his creative attitude: he does not race against reality, but attentively observes it.
Wejman is a complex artist, philosopher and craftsman in one person. „A graphic designer should have paint under his fingernails.” - he says. First the concrete, the work, the craft, and only then the philosophy. The rasp of the press, the metal, the smell of paint and acids, the rustle of paper - what hides behind the graphic work is a reminder that art is the physical experience of the world.
In his hands, printmaking becomes not just a complex technique, but a way of thinking philosophically about reality. Wejman's world is a space parallel to our own, made of irony, tenderness and deep reflection. In the monumental Horizontal Comedy, the earth tilts, loses its balance and reveals to us something invisible. In By-products, chance becomes an ally, a co-author, and in Dynia the cosmos is enclosed in the universal shape of an autumn vegetable, repeated in endless variants. Wejman is an outsider of modernity. Rooted in tradition, though never constrained by it. Melancholy and humour, absurdity and technical discipline, the everyday and the metaphysical coexist in his works. In a world of over-saturated images, his prints are a reminder that art is born of attentiveness.
This exhibition is not a classic retrospective, but an encounter with an artist who continues to amaze. A meeting with a master who does not like pathos, does not moralise, does not explain, but leads the viewer through his world - ironic, full of distance and yet deeply human. The exhibition presents an extensive selection of the artist's works - not to summarise his oeuvre, but to pause for a moment. To see that in Wejman's art, the work is an act of extraordinary intuition
and solid craftsmanship. To see how immensely powerful contemporary printmaking is - an autonomous and still vibrant art discipline. Because, as the artist himself says: „Not everything needs to be understood - all it takes is a good etching”.
Exhibition dossier
