imagination

Imagination that simultaneously thrives in me has determined my creative process. This indispensable factor, always somewhere anchored in the creative mind of man, giving unlimited power and energy to create.

According to the definition of the Dictionary of the Polish language imagination is the ability to create various images and stories in the mind. According to Aristotle, it is a higher mental activity that allows us to create various forms in our thoughts. The philosopher referred to this activity as mimesis, “the ability to imitate”, and placed it in the space between our thoughts and senses. A very interesting statement was made, among others, by Albert Einstein, or even Napoleon Bonaparte. They believed that imagination is much more important than knowledge, because knowledge is limited while imagination knows no limits. 

It is the coexistence of knowledge and imagination in the mind of man that gives rise to all inventions. Artistic works also have this provenance. They become great thanks to the artist’s imagination. Aristotle himself defines imagination as the imitation of nature. Thereby, imagination is the ability to visualize things that are highly unlikely in reality. In essence, the human mind thus brings into life a new, previously non-existent value. Michelangelo Buonarroti believed that shape could remain hidden in a block of marble, waiting for release. This brilliant artist shaped – first in his mind, then in a slab of marble – David’s body. André Breton – French writer, art critic and theoretician of surrealism turned to imagination in the Manifesto of Surrealism (1924) saying: “Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality.”*. My work on the means of expression that I desired to develop was also born from the layers of the imagination. Images of the water surface, also stimulated by many hours of observation of water surface igniting it, sending my mind into a kind of hypnotic creation.I could describe this state as something between reality and dream. Psychology defines it as wakefulness, that is, a state of conscious and deliberate response to external stimuli. There is also the factor of daydreaming, which means a loss of the feeling of reality, a state between wakefulness and dreaming. I imagined that I could come up with some kind of sign, a trace that would come, or in fact, be pulled out of the world around me and then re-interpreted by my imagination. 

With this sign, I could create anything – planes, spaces, lines… I could also compare it to the process of creating a monomer, a particle, or simply an element that I need to create my own personal world of repeating rhythms and this world is closely inspired by nature. Władysław Strzemiński, in his “Theory of Vision”, believed that “human rhythms” are “part of nature”, and “to see the world you need a man who can see”* He described it as a “visual definition of man”:  

“Thanks to the rhythmization, the fusion of biological rhythms into the image of the world seen – we sense the presence of a living, pulsating, breathing, reacting human in the world we are seeing” this is “the connection and interdependence of the entire matter of the world – including a living, material human being”.  

In Adrian Frutiger’s book “Signs and Symbols” in the chapter “Naturalistic illustration “, the Master explains that “the photographic picture is basically nothing other than a visual “support”, with the aid of which the viewer constantly reassembles inner pictorial recollections in order to find a meaning and a connection in the information given.

”Most of the graphically reproduced images are an attempt to reproduce or assimilate events (most often in a photographic manner) in more or less the same conditions in which human vision is able to capture them in the blink of an eye. Reproduction or projection loses its third dimension, depth, which, thanks to perspective and light effects, are later transmitted as an illusion. In many cases, the colour is also lost, hence the message must settle for black and white contrast and halftone grading”. 

It was also my intent for the trace to be the same as me. It was to show and convey my character traits: expressiveness, gentleness, sensitivity of use and wisdom of understatement. In a word – it was to represent me.