Windmills

 

Anna Kozłowska-Łuc

Studying ceases, so does work. The heat is engulfing, so we are lying and listening. Music or silence. What does actually comfort me? Aside from coffee and chocolate? Art and varied stories told by people. I have stopped reading hateful comments, I do not listen to racist shouts, let them choke. I am looking at the waving air and thinking about meetings with paintings and sculptures. About Instagram, which has become a remarkable museum and, unfortunately, also a landfill site, where different personalities crusade against each other. A great way to reach every corner where there is coverage. Fortunately, I can watch what I want.

I used to be a tourist running from museum to museum, from gallery to gallery. I would extract viewed exhibits and favoured one painting. I could contemplate about it for hours. I remembered brush smudging and paint composition, to be able to translate all of it, every row, shadow and contrast into my poems. This obsession lives on all the shades of the background and brings plentiful possibilities, but today is today. I cannot explore all the digital paths on Instagram, but I still explore the mystery of looking at objects, paintings and sculptures that astonish me. Aesthetic act, when thoughts run in the proper directions and get tangled in the proper mood and look, they do not allow falling asleep. That is how I alighted upon the ceramic sculptures of Anna Kozłowska-Łuc. Although she disappeared for a moment, her work is still present. The rest is too intimate to look at.

The place I came to is not ephemeral, I would say I need to stay here longer. Between separate entities, in the colours of the earth and the oceanic sky. Apparently, good art cannot hoist the life troubles, but it can sufficiently distance them. Is emotional perception together with thinking and writing about art appropriate while the wars affected world collapses and it is possible that only you and I are interested in this matter? After all, the language is the same tool as a brush, knife, spatula, hands or wooden clay modelling tools.

When I leave everyday life, and move to the place where the ceramic sculpture was formed, the unbearable roar of the world goes silent. I survey the sketches, follow the inspirations, I wonder what dialogue I can enter with the artist. With a remarkable artist. I believe that words are unnecessary, but after a while I reverse and attempt to consider the whole as a context of a wider story, a background that can be recognized and described in each layer. At that moment, I remember the words of Magdalena Abakanowicz: "After many years, something soft with complex tissue, has become material I work on. It makes me feel close and related to outside world, which I do not want to get to know otherwise than through touching, sensing and connecting with my world, that is hidden deeply. [...] There is no medium between me and the material I use to create with. I choose my material with my hands. I shape it with my hands. My hands transfer my energy. By translating the design into shape, they will always convey something that escapes conceptualization. They will reveal the unconscious".

Anna forms ceramic people of unique shapes, highlighting their characteristics, dispositions, group membership or individual features that are deeply applied. I assume that it is the hands and the material which Anna uses that enables us to see appropriate light in complex tissue sculptures that smoulders in the imagination. Released unconscious, combines material and concept, arranges according to the code that I will try to reach one day. When artists talk with me, they often tend to rely on a discipline as that invisible spectrum. That includes thinking outside of the box, getting out of yourself, sealing yourself in the studio and creating. Crossing existing models, even fleeing from them. Evidently, Anna creates her own models and trends on many levels.

I study pictures, animals. I examine how she emphasizes their muscles, shapes them effortlessly, smoothing or sharpening the texture. I am impressed with consistency of her work. I had not expected that she would see her as an embodied vision of myself. Yes, this it how it is now, I look at the ceramic sculptures and see myself. I touch my bosom, abdomen, muscular calves and I do not feel peculiar. I sense her language, the wording that is created between us, and it appears that I am overpowered by her. I study faces, matter that highlights imperfections. They look adorable and I fall in love with them like a teenager. Space. Alliance with nature that makes you crave to step in and see what is hidden behind your back. There is this moment of emotion when clay formation becomes an expression of public aesthetics or its lack. A perpetual study of man. Study of a woman and a man. Stressing sexuality, but in such a way as to drown completely in women's or men's eyes. Ethereal or massive faces. Strong legs. Animals submitting to riders. Wrinkled skin replacing human's.

Anna Kozłowska-Łuc is a master in analyzing emotions. Her work is filled with attention given to man, animals, and nature. I am still checking Instagram and loading more photos. And more.

Windmills

Rain at any time of the year. The river flows in at night,

during the day we do not fit under the bridge. Fresh air,

hard paddles. Hands. Red, swollen.

The whole drama, who can be condoned, and who cannot. At dawn,

you can hear only birds and milk cows.

I forget what and to whom. I omit the moments in which I got stuck.

However, I attentively remove the thorns. I know that someday

I will restore the balance to these places.

Peace and quiet in equal measure.

Someday, all these cities will fall. Alabaster forecourts will become

meaningful. Hidden carvings of gates, passages and exits.

Replicated on paper with the appropriate font thickness and dashes.

We will become huntresses in a city built of elusive

impressions. Of caprices. You will be colouring new walls

pale grey. Fewer and fewer stairs, glens.

In the distance they spin or not.

Translated by Katarzyna Czajka