Solo exhibition gallery Simonsini, Luxembourg, 2015
THE KEYS
Igor Ganikowskij (Cat. Villa Zanders) 2003
“That arrow hits its mark that flies eternally.”
Vladimir Nabokov
The creative work of every artist is marked by a variety of phases. Each work of art is a struggle to find a suitable shape forthe artist's imminent expression. Throughout the spatio-temporal labyrinths of my works, the viewer continually comes face to face with Gates leading to other worlds (from those of Cerberus to those of Kafka). Some of these gates open of themselves, but others require that you yourself search out their keys. Still others will never be unlocked, thank God, for a sudden flash or a deep feeling of the viscously black might then transform your
being into wisps of nothing.
1.
The sheer enormity of the bulk of my work has taken pressed down on my point of view, transposing it at every turn. From a formal point of view, you can see how my works transition from figurative to abstract over time. If you know my previous works, you can find a way to pry the safety on the loaded, abstract ones.
A firm constancy preserves the thematic and motifs of my works. The primary interest in all my works has always been first causes, herewith the translation of the untranslatable conveys information of a value higher than the capturable.
2.
The well-known Russian philologist Mikhail Bakhtin has coined the term "chronotope" (from Chronos- time, and Topos- space) to designate the inseparable union of time and space.
Naturally, visual and spatial images dominate in art, while invisible time can be imagined only metaphorically as something dynamic and emerging.
In a painting, time is hidden in the object in a way that it is not hidden in music, literature, or a movie. And despite this, I strove from my first attempts to "saturate" my works with time, to migrate the spatial into the temporal (the series "Cathedrals from the 90s). The geometry of my most recent works has been construed so that the images cannot be grasped if looked at from a single point in space. You must move around them to embrace their entirety, and it is just his motion that enables you to realize their temporal aspect. Embedded segments of a work sometimes represent time as well, those insets of intermittent dark and light margins. Their iterative frequency yields the impression of an altered pace; their directional intent mark the linear, or backwards flow of time.
3.
Insets have been signature trait of my works since 1986 ("White and Black," 1987; "In Memoriam to my Mother," 1989). Such insets can be read as homogenous, or at the very least, mingled with the surrounding space
or margins. They can seem to be different from the main accent of a given work, but the greater the contrast they inhere, the greater their semiotic particularity. Often, my insets can be taken as a "window into another world," as an accentual magnification of some important, but usually unseen, aspect of existence.
As such, the inset functions as a "text within a text," provoking consideration of the complex relationships of the parts among themselves. And beyond all this, the inset encapsulates an enduring memory about a sense of the whole.
4.
To see actually means to change one's viewpoint. Michael Epstein has written: "A phenomenon acquires the quality of volume only as we contemplate it from different points on all sides, and the more points we consider, the more whole our worldview." Our movement through many points gives us a chance to create a world-vision. This chance, which cannot be reduced to a single definite attitude, amasses different positions, arranging the entire field of vision into what is cognisable (the series, "Books," all objects...). Thus, when you let your eyes roam over my three-dimensional works, assuming difference stances, you will receive ever-changing streams of data. Opposites will converging by means of your motion, negatives will turn into positives. This integrative process of informational experience tries you with its high level of semiotic density.
5.
My most recent works have undergone a transformation into more purely abstract ones. Their narrative signs are hidden under layers of paint.
These signs break through to reveal themselves only as small etchings scratching through the surface.
My interest in geometry has grown with my attempts to chart those "existential landscapes" that score the "signs of the lack of Being".(J.-F.Lyotard).
My geometry is one that translates points of chance into the sphere of the transcendental, for this geometry conveys the world as a fixed one that is not interrupted by change, but one that interrupts change itself. The world where souls live are aware of geometry, and they feel how geometry is a part of the world of ideas,and consequently of pure forms. Anamnesis- remembrance are but re-rendering of the unalterable. Truth has its undying home in the invisible and incomprehensible. K. Malevich once said that geometry is the visual convention of nonexistent shapes.
In my geometry, any study undertaken does not partake of a pure concept, but of acquired qualities, of artificiality, of man's fascination with archaic features (my geometry is akin to the works of S. Scully). "...there are no straight lines for which the curvilinearity wouldn't be admixed" (G.Leibniz).
My shapes are graspable by the mental eye. My current artistic quest is what I would call a new constructivism, with the caveat that we must constantly remember that no human being is a chief designer of our universe.
6.
The fold is an enigmatical phenomena. It reifies the idea of the reciprocal dependency of presence and absence,oblivion and recollection, birth and death. The fold links the internal and external, deforms, hides,makes flat, and develops. M.Heidegger elaborated on the concept of the fold as metaphor of the link between Being and Not-Being.
"We are speaking about and will forever say that what is opened is always covered, just as we would say that what has once been named is always the treachery of inevitable." (J.-F.Lyotard).(The folded surfaces in my works are represented by objects of crumbled paper (a catalogue of my exhibition in the museum am Ostwall, Dortmund). Or they are rendered by my "Books,"or by flaky surfaces,whether covered or uncovered, they manifest their presence.
7.
The series "Books" appeared in recent years, and should be taken as a contemplation by G.Leibniz or S.Mallarme on the "total book."
Here the book is a spatial unit, with planes overlapping one another, revealing or concealing one another, casting light or plunging into the dark. The process of reading this kind of book resembles an undivided unfolding of n-dimensional reality. It`s simultaneity of ambivalent discovery and the averted gaze is especially important for my three-dimensional works. All secrets should be made bare to the consciousness in such a way that it can move onward to fathom the mystery that is ever so gradually coming into relief from the shadows.It is my general conviction that an inalienable property of being lies in its scrollable quality. The cover and the veil are both a marked border lying between the world of fools and the world of heaven (the series "Torah," "Filter-Screens").
Some books come at us by way of their binds. These are closed books which save their secrets. Other books are open to us, and their perpendicular planes are like pages, a conglomeration of magnified folds or drawers extending over space to enrich our vision.
We may find a similar representation of the invisible world in the Kabala and Torah.
8.
Geometry is like a snapshot of what you failed to observe, but only felt. . You have borders which both protect and destroy, which both raise insuperable barriers and transport you to new worlds. My work on snapshot photography conveys stilled, motionless moments of energy, and it first appeared in 1989 ("Still Life with Small Forms," 1989; "Ghetto,"1998; and the more current series of works "Filters/Screens"). In these works small bricks of filters both compel the darkness and they don`t allow the wideness to stretch itself out.
9.
Quite often in my works you can spy codes in the form of monograms that interweave various graphical motifs into a drawing of loose-fitting readiness. These coded letters imply how memory has dispensed with time
and scrolled itself into a sign.
10.
Authentic art always skirts mystery, but never unveils it, for, by definition, mystery slips away and can only be expressed in an undecipherable system of signs.
Translation Darlene L.Reddaway
Igor Ganikowskij (Cat. Villa Zanders) 2003
“That arrow hits its mark that flies eternally.”
Vladimir Nabokov
The creative work of every artist is marked by a variety of phases. Each work of art is a struggle to find a suitable shape forthe artist's imminent expression. Throughout the spatio-temporal labyrinths of my works, the viewer continually comes face to face with Gates leading to other worlds (from those of Cerberus to those of Kafka). Some of these gates open of themselves, but others require that you yourself search out their keys. Still others will never be unlocked, thank God, for a sudden flash or a deep feeling of the viscously black might then transform your
being into wisps of nothing.
1.
The sheer enormity of the bulk of my work has taken pressed down on my point of view, transposing it at every turn. From a formal point of view, you can see how my works transition from figurative to abstract over time. If you know my previous works, you can find a way to pry the safety on the loaded, abstract ones.
A firm constancy preserves the thematic and motifs of my works. The primary interest in all my works has always been first causes, herewith the translation of the untranslatable conveys information of a value higher than the capturable.
2.
The well-known Russian philologist Mikhail Bakhtin has coined the term "chronotope" (from Chronos- time, and Topos- space) to designate the inseparable union of time and space.
Naturally, visual and spatial images dominate in art, while invisible time can be imagined only metaphorically as something dynamic and emerging.
In a painting, time is hidden in the object in a way that it is not hidden in music, literature, or a movie. And despite this, I strove from my first attempts to "saturate" my works with time, to migrate the spatial into the temporal (the series "Cathedrals from the 90s). The geometry of my most recent works has been construed so that the images cannot be grasped if looked at from a single point in space. You must move around them to embrace their entirety, and it is just his motion that enables you to realize their temporal aspect. Embedded segments of a work sometimes represent time as well, those insets of intermittent dark and light margins. Their iterative frequency yields the impression of an altered pace; their directional intent mark the linear, or backwards flow of time.
3.
Insets have been signature trait of my works since 1986 ("White and Black," 1987; "In Memoriam to my Mother," 1989). Such insets can be read as homogenous, or at the very least, mingled with the surrounding space
or margins. They can seem to be different from the main accent of a given work, but the greater the contrast they inhere, the greater their semiotic particularity. Often, my insets can be taken as a "window into another world," as an accentual magnification of some important, but usually unseen, aspect of existence.
As such, the inset functions as a "text within a text," provoking consideration of the complex relationships of the parts among themselves. And beyond all this, the inset encapsulates an enduring memory about a sense of the whole.
4.
To see actually means to change one's viewpoint. Michael Epstein has written: "A phenomenon acquires the quality of volume only as we contemplate it from different points on all sides, and the more points we consider, the more whole our worldview." Our movement through many points gives us a chance to create a world-vision. This chance, which cannot be reduced to a single definite attitude, amasses different positions, arranging the entire field of vision into what is cognisable (the series, "Books," all objects...). Thus, when you let your eyes roam over my three-dimensional works, assuming difference stances, you will receive ever-changing streams of data. Opposites will converging by means of your motion, negatives will turn into positives. This integrative process of informational experience tries you with its high level of semiotic density.
5.
My most recent works have undergone a transformation into more purely abstract ones. Their narrative signs are hidden under layers of paint.
These signs break through to reveal themselves only as small etchings scratching through the surface.
My interest in geometry has grown with my attempts to chart those "existential landscapes" that score the "signs of the lack of Being".(J.-F.Lyotard).
My geometry is one that translates points of chance into the sphere of the transcendental, for this geometry conveys the world as a fixed one that is not interrupted by change, but one that interrupts change itself. The world where souls live are aware of geometry, and they feel how geometry is a part of the world of ideas,and consequently of pure forms. Anamnesis- remembrance are but re-rendering of the unalterable. Truth has its undying home in the invisible and incomprehensible. K. Malevich once said that geometry is the visual convention of nonexistent shapes.
In my geometry, any study undertaken does not partake of a pure concept, but of acquired qualities, of artificiality, of man's fascination with archaic features (my geometry is akin to the works of S. Scully). "...there are no straight lines for which the curvilinearity wouldn't be admixed" (G.Leibniz).
My shapes are graspable by the mental eye. My current artistic quest is what I would call a new constructivism, with the caveat that we must constantly remember that no human being is a chief designer of our universe.
6.
The fold is an enigmatical phenomena. It reifies the idea of the reciprocal dependency of presence and absence,oblivion and recollection, birth and death. The fold links the internal and external, deforms, hides,makes flat, and develops. M.Heidegger elaborated on the concept of the fold as metaphor of the link between Being and Not-Being.
"We are speaking about and will forever say that what is opened is always covered, just as we would say that what has once been named is always the treachery of inevitable." (J.-F.Lyotard).(The folded surfaces in my works are represented by objects of crumbled paper (a catalogue of my exhibition in the museum am Ostwall, Dortmund). Or they are rendered by my "Books,"or by flaky surfaces,whether covered or uncovered, they manifest their presence.
7.
The series "Books" appeared in recent years, and should be taken as a contemplation by G.Leibniz or S.Mallarme on the "total book."
Here the book is a spatial unit, with planes overlapping one another, revealing or concealing one another, casting light or plunging into the dark. The process of reading this kind of book resembles an undivided unfolding of n-dimensional reality. It`s simultaneity of ambivalent discovery and the averted gaze is especially important for my three-dimensional works. All secrets should be made bare to the consciousness in such a way that it can move onward to fathom the mystery that is ever so gradually coming into relief from the shadows.It is my general conviction that an inalienable property of being lies in its scrollable quality. The cover and the veil are both a marked border lying between the world of fools and the world of heaven (the series "Torah," "Filter-Screens").
Some books come at us by way of their binds. These are closed books which save their secrets. Other books are open to us, and their perpendicular planes are like pages, a conglomeration of magnified folds or drawers extending over space to enrich our vision.
We may find a similar representation of the invisible world in the Kabala and Torah.
8.
Geometry is like a snapshot of what you failed to observe, but only felt. . You have borders which both protect and destroy, which both raise insuperable barriers and transport you to new worlds. My work on snapshot photography conveys stilled, motionless moments of energy, and it first appeared in 1989 ("Still Life with Small Forms," 1989; "Ghetto,"1998; and the more current series of works "Filters/Screens"). In these works small bricks of filters both compel the darkness and they don`t allow the wideness to stretch itself out.
9.
Quite often in my works you can spy codes in the form of monograms that interweave various graphical motifs into a drawing of loose-fitting readiness. These coded letters imply how memory has dispensed with time
and scrolled itself into a sign.
10.
Authentic art always skirts mystery, but never unveils it, for, by definition, mystery slips away and can only be expressed in an undecipherable system of signs.
Translation Darlene L.Reddaway