Call it a harmonia oppositorum, an unlikely harmony between the two opposing forces:
hard, heavy, immobile, eternal rock vs. ethereal, ephemeral shadows.
Bolesław Ryziński’s photography uses antinomous elements to lead us deep
into the human history. In Platon’s Politeia, the rock with the shadows cast on it
are elements of one of the most important parables about the human fate.
In the aesthetics of the Middle Ages, nature was described with anthropomorphic metaphors:
a lake was an eye, a bulrush represented an eyebrow, rock stood for the body of Christ;
its cracked surfaces were interpreted as wounds on His body - hence, when painting
The Virgin of the Rocks, Leonardo Da Vinci chose the rocky background not for
an aesthetic reason, but because of its symbolic meaning.
According to Greek mythology, Art began with an image of a shadow on a wall.
In Book 35 of his Natural History, Pliny the Elder maintains that the contour of human body
constituted the first painting ever […omnes umbra hominis lineis circumducta].
In chapter 15 he talks about a beauty of Sicyon, Kora, who falls in love with her father’s
young worker. Seeing the feelings sparkle between the two, father sends the object of her
affection on a far and dangerous journey. On the farewell evening, Kora wishes to etch a picture
of her lover in her memory. She brings an oil lamp to his face and draws his profile
[umbram ex facie eius ad lucernam in pariete lineis circumscripsit].
Thus, according to Pliny, woman became the world’s first painter.
The set of extraordinary photographs by Ryziński, so simple in their poetics
(with simplicity being a goal most difficult to attain in Art), register something both elusive
and archaic. Carl Gustav Jung would probably discover in them a fleeting taste of prehistory –
the first image of a man – the beginning of all art similar to the paintings in the Lascaux Cave,
created some twenty thousand years ago. These Paleolithic shadows of animals and people still
arouse admiration with their magical expression. Born on the island of Wolin,
with it tall embankments and sea boulders, Ryziński has combined this archetype
with his present experience among the Canadian coastal rocks of Cape Breton.
Lech Majewski (curator)
