"„no flower, no step, where is the man?”
in the move of rocks,
in the trail of rake,
in the work of letters
In these poetic words, Roland Barthes expressed his admiration over the abso- lute rule of signifiant of the Japanese Zen garden. While writing his Empire of Signs he was truly enchanted by the wonderful disinterestedness of meanings which composed those spaces. Searching for such places – deprived of the entire ideological superstructure due to their original functions and just on the ground of disinterestedness, revealing the potential of interrelation, is what Marcin does. He resigns from the exotic trips in favour of exploring the neighbourhood which seems to be the most touchable reality, a well-known area, a cosy unit. It often turns out how deceptive such a viewpoint is. It was curiosity, motivating to solitary peregrination in order to find his own genius loci, which led him gradually from illustrativeness to more and more careful studies which often hide the phenomenon under the visual surface. The dark projections of fantastic narrations of the initial works paved the way to strict arrangement and precision. The space – still rooted in a specific reality – underwent the process of fragmentation and then vivisection of the fragments, and it finally became an autonomous organism with its own, diverse morphology of paths, spirals of stairs without the beginning and the end, tunnels, entrances, exits and innumerable floors – all disappearing in darkness. We can see the wholeness through the fragment, as the author wants us to look, and we float gently above the pavements. But Marcin hides the tracks very skillfully, so that we cannot find anything conducive to identify the places. Unusually suggestive and sensual matter dismisses the question about any exact address, making the places even more specific. We are excused from the duty of “naming” and that is why an excavation remains in close connection with a basement corridor and a staircase is related to Dante’s inferno. I have an impression that the balance of narration is what makes Marcin’s works a very open picture, without the burden of intrusive monosemanticism. It is more like a record than a story, a kind of discontinuous utterance, an art of fragment which does not squander its semantic potential among the virtuoso demonstration of the artistry. And there is also restraint, which intensifies the mystery, widening and deepening the space of those repeatedly bitten works."
Grzegorz Hańderek
Grzegorz Hańderek. Born in 1977 in Zabrze. He graduated from the Art Institute of the University of Silesia (a branch in Cieszyn) 2002 and the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice, receiving his diploma at the Intaglio Printing Studio of Professor Jan Szmatloch in 2003. In 2005 obtained the Doctor of Arts degree; Since 2004 he works at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice as Associate Professor. Since 2008 he is a Dean of the Faculty of Arts.