John Paul II Avenue divides two boroughs – Wola and Warsaw City Centre. On each of its side, on Solidarnosci Avenue 82 and 82a, there are two identical buildings within mirror architectural guidelines. The buildings are part of Muranow (a borough in Warsaw), formerly designed by Bogdan Lachert as a city-monument. Found building material was used to build a new borough to commemorate the destruction and revival.

The neighborhood came into being on the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto. The severity of Lachert’s concept was to be overcome by the variety of the architecture. One of the proposals was a project of two residential towers on the intersection of John Paul II Avenue and Solidarnosci Avenue. Instead of those, two shorter and semicircular buildings with monumental staircases were built.

Lachert’s project was criticized. Muranow was supposed to be a merry neighborhood. The buildings were plastered and decorated with classical forms.

Inspired by the architecture of the staircases in the two buildings on Solidarnosci Avenue, Jerzy Goliszewski decided to extract the forgotten and barely noticeable Compass rose. The motif was initially a figure on a map or nautical chart used to display the orientation of the cardinal directions, — north, south, east, and west.

Currently, the Rose of the Winds, an ancient version of the compass, serves mainly decorative purposes. The artist wanting to question this function invites us to a journey into the unknown.

Sylwia Szymaniak, November 2009

http://www.wola.art.pl
http://www.jerzygoliszewski.com

Trajectories
(The work was realised for Wola Art 2008 Festival)


The work derived from the reflections on the word “happiness” and the object Moleskine. A black notebook, blank pages, cream-coloured paper. Black elastic band. Japanese style. I had never used anything like it.
I had about a month to complete the work, but most of this time I spent getting used to this ‘thing’. I looked at it and inside it, I opened it, I pulled the elastic, etc. I put it in different positions. Closed, open, stretched, dangling...
I found a pocket. Stuck to the cover on the inside. I could hide something in there.
But one can not hide happiness, people like to share it. They throw it at others like stones, shoot those emotions like rockets.
Rockets have their trajectories, just like so many other things and phenomena. All of this can be drawn, represented in columns, charts and graphs.
Trajectories are like metaphors – not of happiness, but of something potential, where happiness might appear...this place, this point (the resultant of X and Y), if it exists at all, one has to find by himself.
Inspiration for this work came also from the contemplation of one boy’s unruly (forever moving and constantly changing) mop of hair.


Jerzy Goliszewski, October 2008.
www.jerzygoliszewski.com

Jerzy Goliszewski - Lac Bleu


Although the installations created by Jerzy Goliszewski are evidently related to sculpture, they seem to have more to do with paintings. Composed with thousends of little elements, the perfectly elaborated form makes us think about the vision of a series of collumns of a giant radio equalizer, and seems to be equally dynamic. The accompanying ceramic mosaic referes to both Hockney’s swimming-pools and Monet’s impressionist water lillies. The vast, wooden construction finds its origins in the mysterious title, „Lac Bleu”, which provides a hint for interpretation: „Lac Bleu” is a enchanting ”blue lake” in the Alps.
Two experiences converge in Jerzy Goliszewski’s structures. Firstly, bionics, science dedicateted to the study of forms and constructions created by nature. Secondly, the composition of forms in space, structualist searches and abstract tradition which constitute the fundament of the activities at prof. Jacek Dyrzynski’s Studio of the Knowledge of Activities and Visual Structures at Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, where the installation was created. „Lac Bleu” combines these praxis in a poetic manner. Through reduction and multiplication the artist constructs a harmonious panorama.
In its extremely geometric, monumental form, „Lac Bleu” encloses the analysis of the mountain landscape surrounding Chamonix.

Justyna Kowalska (Le Guern Gallery)

www.jerzygoliszewski.com

The installation presented at the exhibition at Pracowni Miejsce was intended as a hermeneutic answer to H.Ch. Andersen's fairy tale "The Snow Queen". Kai's story provided the artist with a pretext to consider his own emotions. Men tend to build protective walls, facades to hide and seperate themselves from others. The work refers to the distance we create in our relations with other people. The fractures, cuts, cracks and wounds allow us merely to catch a glimpse of what remains concealed. We are unable or unwilling to expose ourselves to other people. It is impossible to know the real nature of things. This incessant cognitive process is made up by consecutive interpretations, with which we come up as the pieces of the artificial shell fall of bit by bit. However we are still fascinated by what we cannot discover: the incomprehensible, the unsaid, the obscure.

The form of the installation has been inspired by structures - such as the crumbling sheet of ice, the cracked ground or the rough surface of a congealed lava river – created by the destructive natural forces. But also the common sight of a cracked layer of paint or peeling plaster shows the passage of time which transforms the original shapes, giving them a completely new look.

The work refers to the mirror which, as the fairy tale tells, broke into pieces distortioning the world and making it hideous and absurd. The work fulfills the aesthetic function of art. The elements which consitute the installation are, as was the artist’s intention, also independent images. The sale of the those will gradually deconstruct the installation.

www.jerzygoliszewski.com