Transgress - Ian Wieczorek - exhibition catalogue

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Published to coincide with the solo exhibition

transgress Ian Wieczorek 7 March - 3 May 2019 at Ballina Arts Centre Ballina, Co. Mayo, Ireland

Copyright the artist All rights reserved

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---trans gress-----------IAN WIECZOREK

In Balance

oil on canvas, 150x125cm

Transgression For a transgression to occur, there has to be something to be transgressed: some rule, order, structure, limit, custom or norm. Very often the transgression is motivated by the impulse to freedom created by an unjust or oppressive status quo.

When agent and context are in harmony, there is no motivation to transgress. And so it is that transgressive art very often reflects an undercurrent of violence within the space/time in which it is produced. Banksy’s murals on the Israeli-Palestine wall exist precisely to critique the existence of their supporting surface. Dada’s complaint against the madness of nationalism and militarism requires that it critiques also the aesthetic structures which emerge from the same mind-set. Viennese ‘Aktionismus’ and Brecht or Artaud’s theatre, in their own ways, rail against the prevailing separation of art and life.

If transgressive art aims to outrage or shock prevailing norms and sensibilities, it is with a didactic and cathartic purpose: the world is not as (good as) it should be, and the sensitive/alert individual has therefore a duty to change it for the better.

From an academic perspective, traces of transgression can be found in any art considered offensive because of its shock value and its critique of current social mores. This drive to contradict has motivated art from the French Salon des Refusés artists to Dada and Surrealism. The tradition of an ‘artiste provocateur’ is a long one and ranges from Michelangelo or Dante including negative portraits of current political figures in their works, to Courbet’s celebration of carnality which so enraged Louis Philippe, and from Duchamp to Damien Hirst, it has become a commonplace.

In Wieczorek’s paintings, the transgressiveness lies in the activities of its subjects rather than in their form. The migrants, refugees, the marginalised and fenced-in, who form his subjects, are depicted in an act of rebellion, defiance or libera-

tion from an oppressive situation. They are caught on video surveillance cameras, clambering over razor-wire barricades, escaping from compounds, stealing under border fences. It is they who are transgressing, or attempting to transgress the confines that have been imposed upon them.

The paintings themselves are harmonious and luscious: soft pastel tones, smoky grays and blues, soft shadows blurring into indeterminate milky space. Their aesthetic qualities emerge from a long tradition of figurative and then abstract painting which links Leonardo, Velasquez, Vermeer, Turner, Whistler, Monet, Vuillard, Rothko, Richter and many others – the tradition of seeing light as a blur of colour/tone, and a painting as a harmonious range of such colour/tone blurs.

But herein lies an anomaly, and one which is clearly part of Wieczorek’s thinking. His subject matter specifically focuses on these repeated, individual acts of transgression, specifically highlighting the context from which they emerge. The choice of subject matter is also part of their meaning. Depicting transgression draws attention to the negative situation which needs to be transgressed. And then the individual acts of transgression become generic – they merge into one more or less homogenous call for change. Something needs to be done about these borders and limits, these confines and compounds which oblige people to transgress them. Wieczorek, however, does not claim to be specifically Political in the grand sense, more an alert observer, pointing out an anomaly in the structure of our current geo-politics. His paintings ‘freeze’ this anomaly and save it for our contemplation. For Wieczorek, the paintings have to work in painterly terms, or else they become incoherent, and it is only by thus preserving them in a robust pictorial form that they are given that extra space and time as objects of contemplation, for us, would-be political agents, to mull them over, and perhaps act, vote, or protest differently.

There is often an over-simplified or over-determined definition of ‘political art’ by both artists and critics alike, which reduces complexity into a banal ‘knee-jerk’ reaction: “I will paint this subject and it will immediately become political and have

an effect on the world.” Usually this is misplaced. The paths between clear political intention, making art, and its reception by a public, are long, tortuous, and meandering and often contradictory. Having an idea is not the same as expressing it or convincing an audience to share your view. But one thing is clear – a clear idea, if it is not clearly expressed, using the appropriate forms, grammar, syntax of communicative means, will lose much of its clarity in the expression, and the impact of its message is diminished or lost. This was precisely Adorno’s critique of the transgressive aspects of Brecht’s theatre: when it melted the distinction between stage and reality, it surrendered its specifically theatrical power.

Wieczorek instead, draws our attention to the situation of others, resultant from our political structures. But also to the fragility and arbitrariness of this situation. Between us (free, at liberty) and them (enclosed, confined) is a thin line, sometimes just paper thin – a wire, a fence, a bureaucratic decision, a razor’s edge. Transgressing from one side to the other is a matter of perception. Switching from HERE to THERE, as in the latest video installation, is achieved before our eyes. The only differentiating factor being the T of transgression, which makes the leap, almost imperceptibly. It just takes a decision.

Kenneth G. Hay, Larroque 2019

Kenneth G. Hay is Emeritus Professor of Contemporary Art Practice at the University of Leeds, and Visiting Professor of Aesthetics at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. He is an artist and writer living in France, where he directs the annual Larroque Arts Festival.

Crossing 14

oil on canvas, 24x30cm

Crossing 8

oil on canvas, 24x30cm

Crossing 1-12

oil on canvas, 24x30cm each

Transfixed

oil on canvas, 75x60cm

Night Walk

oil on canvas, 40x40cm

Night Crossing

oil on canvas, 120x180cm

Compulse

video still

Border

photoetching, 21x14cm

HERE/THERE

video text sequence

THERE

THERE

T THERE

T THERE

THERE

THERE

About the Artist Ian Wieczorek is a visual artist working primarily in painting, video and installation. Since 2003 he has exhibited widely both in Ireland (including EVA International 2018, RHA Annual Exhibition 2013/15/16/18, Claremorris Open Exhibition 2009/14/15/17, CCA:RDS 2010) and internationally, with participation in group/curated shows in N. Ireland, Germany, France, Portugal, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, USA and China. He has had solo exhibitions (12 to date) in Ireland, N. Ireland, UK and Czech Republic. Public art works include Sepulchre and Everything That Rises Must Converge (Ireland 2012, 2014), and IUXTA and 00040 (France 2015, 2016). He has also devised and curated a number of shows in Ireland, and has undertaken residencies in Ireland, UK, France and Austria. Much of his work has explored the increasing influence of digital technology in locating social and cultural identity. Recent work reflects both current socio-political events and a continuing narrative: the border as a concept, its implications and its porosity.

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IAN WIECZOREK visual artist

w: www.ianwieczorek.com e: mail@ianwieczorek.com t: 0(0353) 86 8200886