Ewa Kulasek talks to Jaromir Jedliński

Jaromir Jedliński: We first met when you studied at the Art Academy in Łódź. You later lived in London, and for a long time now you have been resident in Cologne though your activity manifests itself in various places elsewhere worldwide. We have continued to be in touch, however. In the 1990s, we bought one of your fine works of the Diary of Cologne series for the Muzeum Sztuki (Art Museum) in Łódź and, during ‘my time’ there it was displayed in our permanent presentation of the Łódź Museum’s collection. I have cited all this because I want to ask right at the beginning about the meaning to your work of the Łódź roots of yours, the avant-garde tradition, particularly Władysław Strzemiński’s, whose oeuvre reverberates in some of your works, the tradition of the Łódź Museum, etc.

Ewa Kulasek: Łódź is my hometown. I quite early discovered the Art Museum there for myself, I was still in primary school at the time. When I was a secondary school student, I visited it over and over again. When I studied at the Łódź Academy, I read the writings of Władysław Strzemiński, Katarzyna Kobro, Vassily Kandinsky, and other artists. And later the years I was staying in London, a very intense times; I was reading and looking at all that, there was not accessible in Poland at that time. But my roots in the city of Łódź and the tradition of Polish and Russian avant-garde have certainly affected my thinking about form and space.
This can be well seen in the Diary of Cologne series (1989-95) that you have mentioned, and in other works on, and of newspapers, made in my first Cologne years in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. There was also another teacher, nature. From my childhood I spent most of my summer holidays in the countryside. The house where we lived stood solitary among the fields. The dark line of the forest marked out the horizon. I spent hours looking at the sky, at times so near, at other times so distant. I spent hours watching the undulating expanse of grasses, always the same and ever different. I think that this sharing of my life between the urbanized and open space was of much meaning. There was knowledge, and there was intuition. Besides, thus shifting from one place to another, I could discover and perceive each anew, noticing their other variants, new aspects. My stimulant to work is not what I already know, but what I still don’t – my cognitive urge as such.

Jaromir Jedliński: Friedhelm Mennekes, the German Jesuit and professor of Pastoraltheologie und Religionssoziologie who also deals with various areas of the humanities, and especially contemporary art, has called your work (in an essay dedicated to it) ‘grey graphite art’. You are persistent in your use of graphite in different ways, in your spatial projects, too, by painstaikingly covering at times very large areas with layers – many layers – of it, line beside line, until ‘graphite itself merges into a surface’. The procedure was the most manifest in what you did for the Kunst-Station Sankt Peter in Cologne, in the place of art created and run by Friedhelm Mennekes. You had a studio for almost two years in the top level of the Romanesque church tower, in which interior you executed a unique work, by covering an entire wall in graphite. From this background emerged seven vertical, elongated rectangular forms with a different, polished shiny surface, bringing light reflections back to the texture. What is the meaning to you of your work in this peculiar place, and your co-operation with Mennekes, who occupies a special position in the art world?

Ewa Kulasek: I first met Friedhelm Mennekes shortly after my arrival in Cologne in 1989. Soon later – I was a student at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf at this time – he offered me a grant at the Kunst-Station Sankt Peter, the status of an Artist in Residence. I found the atmosphere of the Sankt Peter, the air of the place, and my contacts with Friedhelm Mennekes congenial. This does not only go for the ‘soulful’ old walls, and Mennekes’s charismatic figure, but also the atmosphere of research and numerous exhibitions of contemporary art, often controversial in the context of the place. This was my oasis. I worked a great deal, I walked on the banks of the Rhine, and I listened to Bach. Bach is always the same and always different. The wealth of variations, so different and so similar to one another, like sea waves, is quite incredible. I was listening to Bach, looking at the water, and drawing lines, line after line. This is where my first graphite images came into being. This is also where I thought more and more of space and its potential shaping. When, in 1994, I embarked on the Wand (‘Wall’), 1995 project, a permanent work intended for the Sankt Peter in my (former) studio in the Romanesque tower, outside the strictly religious part of the church, I knew the space perfectly. I knew exactly how light illuminates and alters it.
I decided to define the space anew through the effect of a wall drawing, its size, form and location. I wanted to know to what extent I could affect the light and atmosphere of the space with a palpable work. I wanted to add the soulful element to the space. By this time I had had some experience with my graphite paintings and drawings on paper, on which I had worked in the context of exhibitions. I knew that I could confront the dark grey weight of graphite with the architectural volume, that I could use the shiny graphite surface, its capability for light reflection, to conjure up a peculiar mood.

Jaromir Jedliński: Alongside many other artists, Professor Mennekes has formulated exceedingly important interpretations of works by Joseph Beuys. The book he created in collaboration with Beuys, Beuys zu Christus. Eine Position im Gespräch / Beuys on Christ. A Position in Dialogue is based on their investigation into the connections between art and Christianity, religion, spirituality. Also with relation to your work, Mennekes has stated that the ancient unity of art and religion returns when we look at the wieght of thought and colour in your wall piece within the walls of the thousand-year-old church. How do you perceive these links in your own work and in current art in general? This is exceedingly important to me in the context of my concern with Beuys, especially in connection with the set of his works Polentransport 1981 that he donated to the Art Museum in Łódź in 1981. Here the Łódź context returns again, since you know the collection perfectly. As for other artists openly undertaking the context of the co-essentiality of art and religion, who had earlier exhibited in the same rooms of the Galeria Muzalewska in Poznań, mention is due in the first place to Marek Chlanda and Koji Kamoji. So, how do you perceive these references?

Ewa Kulasek: It is the viewer who subjects each image, each work to peculiar interpretation. This means that if several people see my work, it may happen, or quite certainly will, that each will respond to it in his/her individual way. I have never believed in art that needs an instruction of usage. Images and space have nothing to do with the verbal. Response to them occurs primarily in the subconscious. Experience and intellect make their appearance at a later stage. This is why images impress some more than they do others. It is of no consequence to the image as such whether I am a believer or not, how soulful I am or what is my attitude towards religion. Only by arriving at the right form can I cause my work to be strong. I believe in intuition and inspiration as important factors in creative process (it may be belief to some and mathematics to others), and I believe in concentration. Ultimately, however, the choice and decision-making rests with me. What remains in the end is the work that has to defend itself all by itself. In my opinion people confuse certain values today. We more and more often hear some say that art has become contemporary religion, and museums contemporary temples. Some carry the comparison as far as football and stadiums. Religion, art, and football alike can stimulate powerful emotional response in the member of the public. Yet it is different in each case.

Jaromir Jedliński: Could you, please, tell me of your other spatial undertakings, the Raum der Stille (‘Room of Silence’), a peculiar area for contemplation you have created in Nordrhein-Westfalen, and about your Sommerschlafzimmer (‘Summer Bedroom’) project of 2002? In these comprehensive architectural-artistic undertakings, drawing in graphite makes its appearance again though it may be called ‘total drawing’. I believe that you are mainly a drawing maker. However, Ulrich Krempel writes in his text dedicated to your drawing that ‘you take possession of surfaces and spaces exactly in the same way’. What were your intentions when you shifted from drawing on paper, newspapers or envelopes to drawing on the wall, and eventually to drawing taking on the comprehensive spatial form of a building of its own, which serves as its background?

Ewa Kulasek: Space is the most vital of all things that surround us. It is intense and dense. It is unceasingly present. In my work, I seek primarily to define anew, but perhaps also create a new, a definite space, whether external or internal. I believe that through spatial interference, we may make a definite space more ‘visible’, that we may affect our intuitive perception. This does not only apply to reception of space as such, but also the art within. Thus it is space that interests me, but also memories of definite pictures or moods. The Raum der Stille (‘Room of Silence’) emerged in 2000, as a result of my experience of working at the Sankt Paul and also from my wish to create a definite space, definite place anew. It is an architectural sculpture: outside a pale mat concrete cube with narrow skylights and inside Raumzeichnung (‘Spatial Drawing’) in dark grey shimmering graphite. The sculpture is built on the premises of Blücher GMbH, a high-tech company occupying the buildings of a former turn-of-the-century paper mill. I believe that we all need art to live. I wanted to create a work that will be used by many people, be part of their life, and be experienced over and over again. The structure is erected at a distance from the plant, at the edge of the Neander Valley (Neanderthal), where once a water treatment plant rendered the beautiful landscape inaccessible. It can be seen from the premises of the firm, but – in order to get inside – one has to make a decision and walk along a narrow path that leads through a meadow full of wild flowers. The sculpture is accessible to the public. So there is an outer space and an inner space. We can walk through the meadow, walk round the sculpture and enter it. We can perceive the inner space and experience it, and we can enter it, but, while inside, we can observe the outer space, nature, and experience it anew. The dark glossy greyness of the walls and the narrow window openings account for the dimness of light. The project I am working on now is likewise an architectural sculpture, Sommerschlafzimmer (‘Summer Bedroom’).

Walls: smooth pale concrete.
Bed: heated stone.
Ceiling: the sky.
No windows.

I am thinking of a series of the sculptures in various contexts. Not necessarily, as the title may suggest, in a park or a garden. I am thinking of bedrooms in urban space, on terraces-roofs, in inner courtyards or elswhere. On getting inside, we only see the inner space and the sky that until now is still relatively democratic and peculiar. As I said, I have always been very much impressed by the sky. By the sea and the waves, too. I like recollecting the experience of sitting in the evening on a rock that sun has warmed during the day, of listening to the darkness and looking on.

Jaromir Jedliński: Your works evoke the impression of a slow passage of time. They are records of long time sequences, which is somewhat reminiscent of the painting of Alan Charlton, who states, ‘I am an artist, who paints a grey painting’, or of Roman Opalka’s project OPALKA 1965 / 1 - ∞
Also, the reception of your works seems to take much time in order to be read. Though your works are usually monochromatic, light plays a considerable role in the process of reception. To be complete, reception has to occur at changing natural lighting conditions. Do your intentions confirm my intuition that time and light are essential to your work, and so is the contemplative quality pointed our earlier?

Ewa Kulasek: To me, making monochromatic works in graphite is a form of meditation, a form of concentration. The drawing process brings in a kind of order. To ‘draw’ a line means to have an idea, to have a notion. To fill large surfaces with a graphite pencil, line after line, until they become a unity, takes time. In the case of works like the Wand (‘Wall’) in St Peter’s Church in Cologne or Raum der Stille in Erkrath near Düsseldorf, it is a matter of several months. There is also their lustre, their sensitivity to light. However faint it is, it brings them to life, makes them active. Whenever light changes, they look different. As a result, we are tempted to watch, stay in their presence. Hence the aspect of time, often touched on in their context, something we tend to associate with music rather than images. All that I am saying also applies to other works, much smaller ones and on different ground. What I have in mind is my Graphite Pictures, Papers, Pillows as well as Grey Cardboards and Boxes. This is also true of the Linienzeichnungen (‘Line Drawings’) of 1997-98, and the latest ones, the Greynesses in watercolour and ink on aluminium sheets. It often happens that a small-size work can organize quite a considerable expanse of space.


Poznań – Cologne, January – February 2004


translated into English: Joanna Holzman


© by Ewa Kulasek & Jaromir Jedliński
© for the translation by Joanna Holzman

Original Polish version of the conversation was published by the Muzalewska Gallery in Poznań, Poland in 2004, in connection with Ewa Kulasek’s solo show there.