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No Pardon |
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| Ronald Schenkel Venturing into borderline areas, in environments characterised by an ambivalent perception is not usually quite safe ; however at the same time it is much more fascinating than remaining to the safe territory of clearly defined relations and unequivocal attributions, within the context of familiarity, limiting one’s experimentation to tested techniques. Tamara Bialecka prefers to linger where others fear to venture due to uncertainty, sometimes almost bordering on kitsch, and in any case exploring areas where very different techniques meet, where materials pass from their habitual context of another, thus also changing in significance. Tamara Bialecka’s art is agreeably fresh, even if her themes do not appear all that new. Her works concern man, nature and society, but center precisely on the absence of natural vitality; in a surprisingly poetic, but sometimes decidedly unsettling manner. Among her most striking works we find the objects titled “Aquarium”. The artist has incorporated algae, corals, dried fishes and conches in polyester cubes. These are lit form within, and may therefore be used as lamps. Plants and the other organic materials keep for an unlimited period of time when incorporated in polyester. They remind of primordial life conserved in amber, a life which today no longer exists. Tamara Bialecka’s aquariums are therefore an anticipation of memory, an anticipation of extinction. Also the “Finds” have a similar effect : animals, flowers, plants but also garbage incorporated in synthetic resin. In these works the organic bodies have been eternalised in cylindric forms, after a chemical reaction. This has given rise to the creation of air bubbles, which are to be understood as an essential part of the objects; even if their appearance is casual, they are an aesthetic element. In fact, these bubbles are signs of a manifestation of life: as if the beings incorporated in the resin had drawn their last breath. What Tamara Bialecka shows in a kind of modern still life, that is to say, not precisely a “nature morte”, but rather a “nature mourante”, a dying nature. And the “Finds” are as unsettling, in their mute melancholy, as the “Aquariums” are decorative. In a certain sense agony is also the theme of a series of “Venetian views”. The postcard images of architectural sights from the city on the lagoon have been transferred to Perspex ( sheets immersed in various colored liquids ) , which easily evoke the turbid waters of the Venetian canals. Small figures and miniature objects also float in the liquid. Tamara Bialecka’s images of Venice condemn the transfiguration of the lagoonal city to a bitter destiny, even if it is quite amusing to observe the single “swimmers” from close up. But Tamara Bialecka is also capable of creating another, more substantial type of works. One consists of a round table, with a plenisphere. The knives and forks of voracious eaters are stuck into the continents and oceans. Chairs, the back of witch carry the flags of some of the world’s bellicose nations, are arranged around the table. It seems as if the meal has been suddenly interrupted, and that the dinner guests have left their places, with the cutlery stuck into the last bite. No explanation as to what scared the company is given. But the diners may perhaps have eaten themselves, and in Bialecka’s work, which at first glance may appear of a didactic- moralising character, a dark humour surfaces. Tamara Bialecka saves us an admonishing finger. Her Art is never only political, social, private. Her works underscore the involvement of the individual in a web of relations with a multifaceted and even bewildering environment – and consequently the contradictions on which the self-same environment is based. In her work man’s relationship with nature, with unsettling overview of a world which has alienated itself. The utilisation of topoi of general validity is here systematic. The observer recognises something familiar in them, but at the same time the material, and above all the coherence with which Tamara Bialecka evokes images and metaphors, reveal the absurdity and horror underlying some gracious stereotypes. In fact, to Tamara Bialecka the spirit is a glass cloud suspended above the image of a sleeping person ; and in the “eye in the well” one does not penetrate the profound mystery of fairy tales, but - the video movie has finished - one fixates the eternally dismal glass of a screen. Tamara Bialecka is perhaps one of the few artists capable of contributing with contents in a period which is essentially critical towards a sense of reality, and who dare making statements, without giving an impression of posting manifestos, without violating their art. The artist owes this achievement first and foremost to her intrepidity, her courage to work with very different materials, as well as to always observe clichés or metaphors in a new light, and with a critical curiosity. Ronald Schenkel , 1999 |
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