Friday,
26 April
Throughout the centuries people have collected curiosities: stuffed wild creatures from remote countries, relics and talismans, monstrous foetuses dipped in formalin, drawings, paintings and items that were raised to the rank of artworks because of their craftsmanship. Closely watched, these precious collections called wunderkameras, kunstkameras or the cabinets of natural curiosities were supposed to help us to understand the rules of our own world. There was one non-fundamental virtue that caused them to happen – curiosity.
Tomasz Machciński is richer than the creators of old wunderkameras. For half a century he has built a collection and created the exhibits, its most important element. The artist photographs himself, and therefore the world. The dispute as to whether the images which show up in his lens one should treat as portraits or self-portraits is secondary when we consider the meaning of the entire work.
A lot has been written about Tomasz Machciński’s working method. The artist himself speaks a lot about it, and underlines that he uses only natural processes associated with the changes in his organism (loosing and growing back hair, getting wrinkles, losing weight etc.). He does not do anything rashly; he prepares methodically, physically and mentally to show his subsequent incarnations. He does not like comparisons – used by art critics – to other artists even if these are artists well known in the world such as Cindy Sherman. He also does not like to be labelled (as an outsider, raw art, art brut). He sees himself as a creator and researcher – the discoverer of immortality portrayed in the thousands of faces from his photographs.
Tomasz Machciński bewilders, just like wunderkameras used to. In the year of his jubilee, the 50th anniversary of his work that was started in the Modern Art Museum in Warsaw, his colourful photos are shown for the first time. He started with small black-and-white photos shot using a Smiena 8 and he was faithful to black and white photography for a long time. For a decade, together with the change in technology to digital, colour has appeared in his works. But this is not the end of the self-creation process. He is also known to internet users by his video works that feature gestures and live sounds created by the artist. Machciński laughs, sings and dances in front of the camera. In that way he broadens his own, unprecedented art collection. To this moment he has shot over 18 thousand photographs.
Anna Tabaka