is the first notion that comes to mind when I think of Mirosław Maszlanko’s art. And this concept is it not restricted to the coherence of his artistic path spanning almost thirty years and his fidelity to natural materials and manual techniques. Nor is it linked to precise art programmes or planned artistic strategies. In a Hasidic tale, Rebbe Zusya, when asked about “being himself”, replied that after his death, no one would ask him why he was not Moses, but they would ask him why he was not Zusya. So, Maszlanko is Maszlanko both as a person and as an artist. This authenticity is derived from the amalgamation of art seem to become particles of existence, just like breath is.
The materials, the techniques hosen and the artistic declarations are directly associated with Maszlanko’s life, his background, education and the places where he once lived. The artist’s studio is housed in a barn, on the farm where he grew up. Close by, he collects grasses and wood and grows willow to make wicker. He externalities the person and the creator. All this has invited almost archaic conditions of creation: there is nature with its abundance, there is the human with his encounter into completely non-utilitarian art-an idealistic manifesto. The beautiful thing about these works is that they feature no elements of artificiality or coercion. Regardless of whether they are found amongst nature or incorporated into interiors, they give the impression of always being there, like natural entities.
The sculpture jargon talks about a from that is “sensed”. This could be one of the keywords used to describe Maszlanko’s artworks. On the whole, this concept refers to the balancing of directions, tensions and minimal loads to expose the harmony, purpose and relevance to the expression sought. It is something that is to be sensed instead of being learned.
Maszlanko has the ability to weigh up his creations down to a single gram. He strives for this perfect harmony of aligning the shape with the surrounding environment incredibly consciously and tirelessly. What else would prompt this man suffering from a fear of heights to place his trembling foot on the next rung of the ladder only to add a few more blades of grass and ultimately close the desired shape? He is helped in this endeavour by the organic nature of the materials their lightness (if these are not pine slats used in “Opus Reticulatum” from 2016), and a technique consisting primarily of the touch of the human hand ( combining grass with beeswax in “Written on Water”, “Pareidolia”, “Illuminations”, or interlacing wicker with wire in the “Tomogrphy of a Tree”).
Although these artworks are often monumental, they retain subtlety and intimacy that I would compare to the intimacy of our native landscapes- that indefinable sweetness that Juliusz Słowacki longed for in Paris and Czesław Miłosz looked back on in Berkeley. Maybe it is about that certain collation of scale , light, colours, materials, or maybe just that familiarity one remembers from childhood? Whatever it may be , you will find it in Maszlanko’s work and, in this respect, these installations-artistically on a world-class level-exude the soul of the landscape of Central and Eastern Europe. If we place them next to the creations of other artists working in nature, such as Andy Goldsworthy or Nils-Udo, they are distinguished by some other type of warmth, a transcendence I would assign to – perhaps with some partiality – the Slavic Imaginarium. We can find in them an affinity with local peasant culture in its subtlest guises; stories of living close to nature, of reverence for its mysteries, of the need to cultivate and sometimes tame it of soulfulness and a sense of the sacred.
And much more Maszlanko’s art objects usually have open-ended titles, alluding to the symbolism of nature; however, when they are inserted into the Bolestraszyce barn located at Michałowski’s former estate and titled by their author “Rabacja” (translator note: the title references an uprisig of impoverished peasants against serfdom in 1846) they generate a new range of meanings. Suddenly, these hands tell a story of perseverance, tenacity, hardship and weariness; of quiet subsistence, often in only by the power of human hands tell a story of perseverance, tenacity, hardship and weariness; of quiet subsistence, often in pain and against one’s own aspirations. These works do not cry out; they do not seek confrontation. This is a parallel narrative of the countryside, except that it is not dedicated to those who went to battle but to those who remained on the land in the shadow of history, without whom continuity would not have been possible. As the artist himself explains (2021), these are “carved metaphors of the past of this land’s ancestors, the past of all of us peasant children”. This particular artistic therqe has been present in Maszlanko’s artworks for a very long time, much before it became fashionable and talked about. It was already evident at the start of his artistic career, as his diploma project at the Fine Arts Academy in Warsaw invited the audience to visit his family’s barn and his childhood memories. Even inside the monumental Galeria El, those who have experienced life in the country can locate its quotations in the columnar grass and wicker sculptures built by the artist. The large, elongated windows of the former church supply wide and dignified strips of light that, in favourable weather, animate the openwork columns and highlight their texture. Analogies can still be found to the light breaking through the wooden slats of the barn, enveloping the sheaves and hay with long streaks of elaborate outlines. And light plays a crucial dual role in Mirosław Maszlanko’s art- it is a form-building material and a carrier of the symbolic divine element, just like in the paintings of icons.
(…)
Katarzyna Krzykawska
San Rafael, October 2022
(from the description of the exhibition “Estarium” at EL Gallery in Elbląg, 2022)