HALINA JAWORSKI

by Dr. Bożena Kowalska

first published in Projekt 5'85/164, 1985

polish, english, german

If art is to convey fragility, incompleteness, living by half, Halina Jaworski's art certainly has this quality. In her case, fragility and unfulfilment do not apply to anything definite, but are understood as a permanent state, as, so to say a Malevich-rooted sense of incompleteness. If we accept what John Matheson says about the young artist in an essay dedicated to her, that the foremost quality of her work is its spontaneity we may be tempted to seek in it traces of the parting with her native country at a very young age. This split and unfulfilment may lie at the source of the artist's personality which is apparently shaped by longing which has never been named, nor even realized, but which is nevertheless continually evoked by the fact that although Halina Jaworski lives and works abroad, Polish is spoken in her home at her instance.

One of the most gifted students of Günther Uecker's at the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf, she made her debut even before obtaining her degree. Her earliest works, executed in the mid-seventies, include linguistic experiments and books. The former were closely linked with her settling in a foreign country. They consisted of comparative notations, for instance, nouns were declined or verbs conjugated in the two languages, and their bringing together created a visual effect. Jaworski's books were different though all were big-sized. One of the first was called In Homage to Strzeminski, followed by the Book of Love more than one metre and a half tall, made of big parchment sheets with pieces of foil coming unstuck, and the inscription "love" at the bottom of each of the opening pages. There were also scroll-books, or "wall books", paintings which fold and unfold like book pages thanks to hinges. Closed or open, they always had the "opposite" leaf unknown to the eye, in which they were reminiscent of printed volumes. Other forms of Halina Jaworski's art includes collages, reliefs, sentimental, ironical and allusive assemblages, and even outdoor action.
Jaworski was never permanently attached to a form or technique. Most important was her comment or message always lurking, almost predatory, behind her formal quasi-games or quasi-experiments. Until 1977, the artist used exclusively white. In 1977, she embarked on a series of geometric paintings. Her use of white was an exercise in ascesis, but there is no orthodox artistic programme in her use of geometry. That is why the Forms form 1978 or the disintegrating Untitled square from 1978/79 were not built for the sake of geometry, but in order to analyse the drama of disintegration (the latter) and to study signs-symbols and their cultural associations (the former). The Forms are a frieze of sign transformations where white, sharp-edged geometric shapes go beyond the areas alloted to them. They are made of non-durable material, which is not without meaning. With Halina Jaworski one never knows where a serious comment ends and mockery or pungent wit of whose implied meaning we are aware begins. In 1979, the municipal authorities commissioned the artist to construct an installation which was to be seen from a distance, notably from the cable railway (Schwebebahn) built about a hundred years ago. The project was launched in commemoration of the merger of the cities of Wuppertal and Barmen. The artist put up a forest of banners, each ten metres high, on the river Wupper. Silvery white, four metres wide each, they were attached to six-metre-high flag-staffs, and each of them had a circular opening with the diameter of one metre. There was as much sublimity and poetry as beauty, simplicity and purity in the contrast between the green trees, bushes and hills, and the white forest of fluttering banners.

In 1981, the artist embarked on a series of polygonal paintings on canvas, the most important in her output so far, entitled "Mehreckige Leinwandbilder", abbreviated by the artist to Ecksy. She began by producing what looks like traditional paintings, with the canvas taut on the stretcher, all fixed by herself. At the next stage she assembled reliefs from the individual parts of these paintings mounted at different angles. As indicated by the title, these works are polygonal, They are asymmetrical and the canvas is not grounded. Portions of it are not covered with paint, so that their colour has remained nobly natural. In places, these works are painted structurally, most often in parallel bands in a single colour, green, orange or blue. Elsewhere, they consist of two uniform colour fields put together in an interesting way.

Her art is free of aestheticism. lt is meaningful and mocks at tradition. She opposes it and offers a new approach to art. Her comment is both tragic and witty. The Ecksy organize space in a perfect way. Poking fun at painting proper, they put forward a proposal for new painting. The Ecksy are at times reminiscent of something as familiar as the Green Eagle, but their flitting across the walls is in most cases quite disinterested. Swift and sharp, or awkward and shapeless, they attract one by their being different from whatever one has seen before. They are not only noteworthy, but beautiful in a peculiar, unique way.

Jaworski's works from the early eighties contain a considerable amount of symbolism. Among them is the Paradise Lost, an installation constructed for the Museum of Art in Düsseldorf. It contains a six-metre high Maltese cross built of four red triangles, symbolizing the order, and a blue pyramid made up of the same elements, symbolizing a sarcophagus, with Jacob's ladder and a shrine with an inscription saying, "Come, Mephisto!". The individual components of this environmental composition are linked up not only on a semantic and architectural basis, but they also make up a whole with the architecture of the interior. Her composition from 1982, entitled Arrows and Shields, a Comment on the History of Poland, was likewise meaningful. Symbols of defence were separate from symbols of aggression by a symbol of Christianity, the fish. The Eye of Providence looking from above is a comment full of sadness and irony.

Halina Jaworski's message is as vivid and colourful as her personality. Her means of expression are variegated. Moreover, they never contain any trace of borrowing. The originality of her thinking, and her creative readiness to produce ever new solutions are striking. Satisfactory as her achievements hitherto are the artist is still full of promise for the future.