Degeneration and life cycles
Even the objects have life. This is a conviction that grew up with me since childhood. As a child, my brother and I had almost no toys. My father said that giving a toy to a child was to stop her from imagining and creating it. At that time, I did not like this idea completely, but still as a child I discovered the taste for invention and creation of objects made of almost everything and almost nothing. That taste ended eventually to become an irresistible tendency to accumulate old and useless things and to create things even more useless. Things old and useless? - I wondered. Nothing seemed useless or meaningless. And so I was filling my room of everything and anything (pieces of tree trunks, skeletons of old clocks, antique keys, pieces of all kinds of machines, empty nests, broken jars, stones, shells, dried plants ...) making it a place utterly exotic and unlikely, especially coming from a girl of 10-12 years. My father called it "museum" or "junk shop", though it contained far fewer frets than he had accumulated in the garage, where our ping-pong table eventually suffocated, or in the back yard. Later I became more "sensible" and ended cleaning the room, but the trend for recycling, to recreate the objects and look at them as "living things" remained.
The sculptures of David Kowalski, and his photographs of objects and / or fragments of old objects, worn, bent, rusty made me remember all this and reflect once more on the relationship that man has established over the millennia with the artefacts he created.
Not always the objects have had a short life, were not always created as consumer products designed to necessarily have a short life. Once, a spear, a plow, a hoe, a boiler, a tool lasted generations, passed from parents to children and remained a "live object" because it continued to be used or because it was seen as an element of a human history. In family homes, it was a tradition to keep the objects of the past the same way the memories of loved ones were guarded and cherished.
Long before, when man still had the starry sky and the rock caves as ceiling, the objects were more than helpful utensils in everyday life. Instruments were essential to survival, they granted social status in the clan and even religious and political status. Anthropologists have questioned themselves about the origin of science, art, magic and religion in primitive societies. Not all agree. While some consider that religion was the first to emerge as a response to fear of the unknown and to the inability to understand and master the elements of nature, others place the birth of religion at a later stage. In response to the problems and needs of everyday life, was born the first technique (the manufacture of tools with a specific function, such as hunting, fishing, cutting, sewing, cooking food ...). From this point of view, Science would be a very late development of the technique, because it implied some theorizing, experimentation and verification of results.
The inventors of artefacts and holders of certain empirical knowledge (such as the production of fire) necessarily assumed a higher status in the clan. They were able to do something that was incomprehensible to the others. They were the first sorcerers, a sort of demi-gods (substitutes of the future gods and spirits) that protected the uninitiated from the dangers of the unknown, the wildlife, the disease and the weather. From this point of view, the first manufacturers of objects were the first magicians and magic began primarily with the use of objects and techniques that common people could not understand or dominate.
Observing the sculptures of David Kowalski, I glimpsed this remote past dressed in new clothes. The influence of Indian culture and art is certainly responsible for the primitive and mystical appearance of many of his pieces. The objects, inanimate by nature, acquire anima and an appearance anthropomorphic. In this second life, the original objects are completely processed, they are combined with others made of a different matter, texture and from a different age. Past and present intertwine so intimately and indistinct. The rusty metal, glass, stones, skins, bones, coming from different backgrounds and times merge to give rise to new "beings." This process of transmutation of elements reminds the Alchemist's "homunculus". As an alchemist, David Kowalski creates new beings that are beyond the usual standards, including artistic standards. Is this art? Some may ask. But what is art? Only pre-designed templates, academic styles, aesthetic schools...? It will not be any product of the human mind that isn't purely utilitarian? And if the "object" has a utilitarian function ceases to be art? When prehistoric man covered the walls with bisons and hunters was he making art? Were they just illustrating the diary of their daily life, since they could not write (the writing had not been invented yet)? These paintings are not now considered "rock art" and utilitarian objects of the past are not currently placed in museums as art objects?
The "new life" created by David Kowalski is born from the degeneration of the past. The artist gives a new life cycle to something that no longer existed, was forgotten, it was useless, was anything but art. The sculptures of David Kowalski make us think about the boundaries of art, where it begins and where it ends. Are there any borders, after all?
And what is useful and what is useless? The art feeds on life itself. It is never useless because it is a precious food for the thought and emotion from whom it arises and to those who appreciate it.
The pictures of degraded objects, rusted, worn by use, abandonment and erosion of the elements are like a catalog of anonymous memories and raw materials. In these photographs we can see details of objects that eventually will gain new life in the sculptures. But even these objects, as they are, seem to live. The colors and textures have the nuances of movement and of life itself. The useless junk takes a completely unexpected aesthetic dimension. A rusty nail or a piece of a corroded metal object appears as if they had passed through the patient hands of an artist. There are not garbage, waste, they are pearls come from a world that only seems to be waiting for a searching and magical look, like David Kowalski does magnificently, to give them new life, whether it be in a picture or in a sculpture.
