BIOGRAPHY

Prof. Dr. Andrzej Zdanowicz
Dean of Dept. Painting and Sculpture
Academy of Fine Arts, Poznan, Poland, 2011

Mrs. Goldyn’s works are based on the experience of art of the eighties and nineties as well as early 21st century. She is using the expression of New Savages and the experience of “Artists of New-Representation” – as Grzegorz Dziamski calls artist who don’t invent new forms, but use ready-made objects by unifying the artificiality of the work of art and the belief in a discovery of a new form by its use in new constellations.
Death of art, announced by critics during the sixties and seventies, actually meant death of avant-garde, when “avant-garde moved to utopia”, as Mrs. Goldyn says, losing clarity of form, breaking its own limits and spreading to all spheres of life. So basically anything was able to be art, Jerzy Ludwiński said in one of his interviews.

The artist, however, who is creating in the spirit of trans-avant-garde, is deliberately using the repertoire of avant-garde means of art in her works, as for example cutting the linen, which on the one hand causes an impression of injury, and on the other hand should serve for “enlightening” by artificial working light. The method of illuminating realizations in the works of art with figures is causing an interesting philosophical effect; the light emanation is in a way expressing the figure’s divinity, so the works get an even theatrical character. The Italian artist Fontana used a similar procedure. She is using the repertoire of Ready-mades by Duchamp, however she is closer to J. Beuys’ philosophy, who once said (I cite acc. to the author’s dissertation): “Duchamps’ silence is overestimated.” By the way, the owner of the title “Doctor Honoris Causa” of this university – Balthaus – made an interesting remark regarding “Duchamp” in an interview. Asked by a journalist about his opinion of Duchamp as an artist, he answered: “A very talented chess player.”

To come back to the author’s artistic experience in her dissertation, the liberty she is moving with in the wide repertoire of means of expression should be emphasized. In her creative method, she is using Matter Painting and Action Painting, showing its relevant property, the creative process. Continuity of creation is nearly identic with life for her. Sacrum and Profanum seem to melt into a unity. The artist here quotes as an example Jackson Pollock, who used this creative method, which interestingly hasn’t found any successors in art. For how can paint be poured yet? Surrealism and Dada, however, have been continued to this day, which is also valid for Mrs. Goldyn as a reference. Her seven years’ stay in solitude hasn’t killed the characteristic property of her creation, spontaneity in using the repertoire of means of western European painting. It is to be supposed that it served for recharging her own batteries. The joy of perceiving the spiritual aspect of the work of art, however, is penetrating in her recent works the sea of matter. The picture “Five Wishes for Shaman”, whose format is composed of small pictures, reminds us of the icon who is mostly interested in the aspect of “reality of fine life”, as recently deceased Jerzy Nowosielski said.

The objects used by Mrs. Goldyn for creating her works are material things; they don’t free themselves from their physicality as it was known so far, but their combination is creating quite a new sense. We find this sense somewhere in the middle of the clustered elements formed by these creations. With exorbitant power, they appear to us in their sensuality, rich colours and passion of surface structure, becoming nearly an erotic frenzy in spatial implementation as well as in the paintings – apart from those touching the meta-language of the pictures, colour is no longer a physical substance, but is alive and turning into a nearer and farther plan – the shining, weight, secret, emotional tension, fear, question, doubt and the idea etc. etc. Just here, I notice a clear continuation of tradition and a conscious creation from the experience of the 20th century. Mrs. Goldyn’s artificial creation shows this relation very well by inserting elements resulting from a deep analysis of the artificial tradition of the last century into her works, however in combination with ideas for their individual application, so that she can be considered an artist who is formulating the artificial response to questions of the 21st century in her own and original way. Does this expressive creation with its wide range of artificial means of expression referring not only to motifs of numerous art epochs, but sometimes even citing them and urgently trying to express feelings, dilemmas and passions have a purpose at all? A sense?

In one of her essays, Alicja Kepińska is dealing with the relationship between art and nature. We mostly oppose these two things. However, there is a property connecting them: futility. Thus, art – whose sense we are wondering about all the time and whose sense we are trying to discover – is just like nature. Mrs. Goldyn’s works have an “animal nature” and their presence is a proof for the existence of both art and nature in its futility, which in my opinion in turn is an important task they have to fulfil.

Mrs. Goldyn’s works find a different answer to each question asked by her. And a different one once again. It seems to me that a natural knowledge is lying in her nature due to which she is conscious of the change of art reality and all the change of the world around us. The reality in Mrs. Goldyn’s works is considering itself continuously in the mirror of art and is subject to the interpretative procedure of a glass plate.

I could write the following on Mrs. Goldyn’s works, paraphrasing the words of the director of the National Museum in Posen, trying to describe the artificial creation of another representative of trans-avant-garde: “that (she) can show that referring to the measurable space of physics, the personal space which we experience between us, places and things is primary and also comprises the semantic shell of things or the expression of their matter. It is getting clear by removing the most ordinary objects from the original context of their perception, leading at the same time to their “de-banalizing” and thus to astonishment merely by their existence. It is fantastic what there is.”

Referring to the motto mentioned at the beginning of the dissertation stating that the sense of an utopist’s work is refusing reality and searching for an ideal, some questions are arising. What kind of ideal are we looking for? Not only the doctoral student, but also all of us. Is there such an ideal at all and does it make sense to look for it? Yet we exactly know that good art consists of the sum of mistakes, scientifically unproven theses, a series of wrong decisions and doesn’t serve anything in practice. In this sense, Mrs. Goldyn’s works are fulfilling all features of good art and in this sense, they are utopian or – as I would prefer to call them – near a dream.

I call the pictures with the real cacti “Biological Pictures”. These cacti are real and are to live, but in a place unusual for cacti, in a scenic picture. They have found a new place of existence; they have to discover this place first, get to know the laws of this place in order to exist and create a new population. The cactus is also a symbol for phallus, but in my works not as a pleasure of sexuality, but as a biological law of fertilization and genesis of population. The cacti are protecting the protagonists in my world.