Piotr Jakubowicz

b. 1973 Kraków
lives and works in Kraków, Poland
info @ piotrjakubowicz.com

Education:

1997 MA Fine Art, Academy of Fine Arts, Kraków, Poland

Exhibitions:

2022 Recent Paintings, Pryzmat Gallery, Kraków, Poland
2020 BLEU, Galerie Lazarew, Paris, France
2020 Panintings from Warehouse, Sklad Solny, Kraków, Poland
2015 Surprise, Stradonia Pop-Up Gallery, Kraków, Poland
2014 Ephemera, National Museum, Kraków, Poland
2012 The End, Bunkier Sztuki Gallery, Kraków, Poland
2008 Plus fort que la mort, Galerie RX, Paris, France
2004 Vinopolis, London, UK
2003 C/O Berlin, Berlin, Germany
2003 Schipol Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2003 The Cooper Union Gallery, New York, USA
2003 UCLA, Los Angeles, USA
2003 Digital House Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
2003 Musashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan
2003 Tama Art University Hachioji, Tokyo, Japan
2003 Digital House Umeda, Osaka, Japan
2003 Kyusyu Sangyo University Museum, Fukuoka, Japan
2003 Tohoku University Of Art And Design, Yamagata, Japan
2003 Shizuoka University Of Art And Culture, Shizuoka, Japan
2002 Spiral, Tokyo, Japan

Piotr Jakubowicz: Unrestrained Wandering
by Rafał Mazur

Emergent art

The confluence of cultures inevitably leads to the emergence of nonstandard, extraordinary occurrences, to tensions and mistakes, to falsely drawn analogies, more intense borderline situations and crises. This happens whenever we encounter problems in communication and differing worldviews. Situations of this sort give rise to tensions that stem naturally from divergences in the very way we see and understand who we are, where we are, why we are, and the “sense of it all”. For, as is now growing increasingly evident, although all cultures pose questions of this sort, they do not necessarily respond to them in the same way. These differences underlie various isolationist attitudes, attempts to preserve the cultural models of a given community, and indeed all types of efforts aiming to halt or prevent the change that inevitably occurs in such situations.

However, there is also another side of the coin. Out of the ferment that arises at the juncture with otherness something qualitatively new may emerge, something that did not exist in either of the intersecting cultural realms, something that never could have emerged on the separate ground of either of them. Such a coming-together holds great emergent potential – the only problem being whether one has the right cognitive attitude, enabling one to perceive and take advantage of it.

There are certain people able to look at otherness without cultural glasses – to do so without lapsing into its vastness, but instead remaining in communication with their own point of departure. What these individuals do has emergent properties: at the confluence of two different cultural qualities, they are able to create a new quality, something stemming from the two previous ones, but nevertheless something new and also independent of the two-element foundation based on which it was created. Perhaps these are the entities that we can truly call new, as they have no counterparts in the past; while they undoubtedly draw upon what existed before, from two independent springs that have long been flowing, they are nevertheless irreducible to either of them.

Art is an exceptionally fruitful area of such emergent phenomena. The fascination of European artists with the Far East already has a long tradition, and this interest is quite obvious when we take sensitivity and difference into account. Artists’ particular sensitivity enables them to experience the distinctiveness of another culture deeply, without preconceived notions. Naturally, many of them do not go further than a certain kind of replication of imagery and means of depiction, primarily drawing attention to the attractively distinctive, physical forms and means of creation found in Far Eastern art, without reaching the point where it turns out that the Far Eastern concept of “art” itself is not identical to the one we operate with in the West. Modern research into the philosophy of art, especially Chinese art of the wenren class, has opened up the door to experiencing an activity which, in the culture of the Far East, can be likened to European art, and taking advantage of how this otherness offers potential for creating something new.

Piotr Jakubowicz’s work takes such an approach to the topic, tapping into the potential of the cultures of the Far East and the West for creative activity. Through his study of the philosophy of the art of the wenren circle, by consistently working on a distinctive state of mind over years of practicing taijiquan and wudang sword (working on “internal energy” – qi), he stepped across the boundary of fascination with Far Eastern art that is delimited by Western ways and models of thinking about art as a carrier of beauty. Thanks to this, he has penetrated deeply into the world of understanding art as a means, a practice, a strategy of action meant to serve the attainment of harmony. By so doing, he advanced from the level of the purely formal utilization of Asian visual-art motifs to capturing the “spirit” of the very activity called art. In other words, he became experienced in what the preeminent Chinese painter, poet and philosopher Shitao described as a “method without a method”. At the same time, Jakubowicz’s work is, if only in view of his education and cultural environment, deeply rooted in the tradition of Western modern art – this undoubtedly includes his use of oil paints, working on canvases, refined color schemes, and painting with unconventional tools, often of his own construction.

It is hard to say, however, in which contemporary style or school Jakubowicz’s paintings should be classified. Rather, they are an excellent example of “emergent art”, a kind of art that flows fluidly out of the fascinations and practices of two cultures, East and West, but is nevertheless irreducible to either of them, not definable and or identifiable through the prism of either of them. Art that clearly belongs to the heritage of each of the cultures, yet at the same time is something different from each of them, something transcending monocultural frames of reference. These paintings can simply be described as “Jakubowicz works” – or, it would be more apt to say: they are “Jakubowicz’s activity” (it is action, rather than just the “products” thereof, that is the essence of this artistic practice), an example of a new, we might say, global art, which naturally has to be classified as transcultural. At the same time, this art leans strongly towards the so-called “post-art” now emerging, where in place of the artist-as-creator-and-presenter there is instead an active recipient, who essentially transforms from a recipient in the traditional sense into an organizer of stimuli and signals, and thereby a creator of what he perceives. It is the recipient’s cognitive competences that demarcate his limits and abilities to perceive and experience art, independently of the traditionally-construed message, incorporated into the artwork by the just as traditionally-construed artist. Jakubowicz’s paintings offer a full opportunity to experience art and the world in this way, because they themselves, like their creator, emerge out of the restricted “artistic ghetto”, becoming, in keeping with the artist’s practice, an immanent and inseparable part of the world, understood as the whole of everything that exists.

Process

Jakubowicz’s paintings are not objects, in the sense of the kind of static and material pieces of art that we have in the West, which have the function of representation. They are also not depictions of the flow of energy, or of the movement and changing of reality itself. Rather, here we are dealing with movement itself, with change, with the flow of energy, not with graphic representations thereof. Jakubowicz’s work is about following along with a process which he does not control in any way, which he subjects himself to, leaving behind traces in the form of lines, blots and shapes. The essence of this procedural experience, for both the painter and the viewer, lies not in concentrating on form, content, or any other categories we are familiar with from the European concept of art and aesthetics, but in the very process and its direct and personal experience, immersion in it and following changes together with it. The objective of this “following along” is also not important, as it is not even clear if any such objective exists. Jakubowicz’s work, and thereby the work of the recipient co-participating in this process, is without any nominal end, it is something that the Chinese wenren called “practice”, something engaged in as part of the art of life, so as to live fully, so as to sense the taste of life, to attain harmony with the movement of reality itself, understood as everything that exists.
The act of this sort of painting, just like the act of perceiving it, invokes what it lies outside of it. In this case there is no planned and thought-out, “invented” creation of a specific work – formed in the creator’s imagination, and only then brought into physical existence (a kind of artistic version of platonic idealism). Rather, “one strike of the brush”, a natural act of spontaneous painting, known from the Chinese concept of art in the wenren circle, involves following along with the flow of reality.

Like in Zhuangzi’s writings,¹ here we are dealing with a kind of free, unrestrained wandering, without an objective, without a plan, and without control over where we are headed or why. This spontaneity of action pertains not only to the very concept for a given painting (which, in fact, does not exist), but also to the techniques by which it is performed, which are created by the artist on the fly; they emerge in close and natural relation with the situations and real time of the process experienced. We can say that what the agent, Jakubowicz, is engaged in is subjecting himself to a process in the sense of existing circumstances, which are also considered to include what is being created by him on the fly. A person, the artist, is closely united with the situation, becoming the situation itself, inseparable from it. In other words, we are dealing with a process playing out in time, with motion, with change, proceeding without objective, without a plan, and completely spontaneously.

Here there is no composing of a painting, in other words no effect that is first imagined and consistently planned for, or also any “pathway” leading to that effect. Colloquially speaking, the artist simply “opens up” to changes in reality and becomes part of that process. Such change itself is the artist’s “power supply”, or more precisely put, here there is no distinction between the agent himself and what “drives” him, what inspires him, gives him creative power. When experiencing the painting we stand before a certain energetic transformational movement, being an immanent property of reality, and this movement gives rise to the spontaneous action experienced in the painting.

This kind of activity can be described as processual, as movement itself, as a process, it is not reducible to the artist, to his environment and tools, but rather understood as a constant transformation of a global dimension. The artist has in this process a limited field of control, which de facto remains outside his scope of interest. What he devotes himself to is the ability to perceive changes and tensions appearing in reality (ranging from the nearest reality, to the farthest) and the capacity to adapt to the movable, changeable form of the world. Taking a radical view, we can say that the creative force in this situation is the very process of changes taking place in the world, while the artist is only making us aware of it, through his sensitivity, by moving his hand, essentially his whole being, in line with its progression.

Practice

We can describe such activity as “practice” – essentially, as the very life of the artist, a kind of daily routine, in which the act of creation, understood in “European style” as a moment of creation, of painting, is the resulting consequence of certain actions, indeed an epiphenomenon, not the objective or final outcome of any activity. Practice encompasses everything the agent does, as its essence is a certain state of mind. The whole process leads to a transformation of the mind – to speak the language of the philosophy of Far Eastern art – a transformation from a “calculating” and “structured” mind (cheng xin) to an “empty” mind, or essentially a non-mind (wuxin). An empty mind is, as it were, a precondition for the capacity to engage in spontaneous action, sensitive to the circumstances and stemming from the circumstances. Surpassing, and thereby rejecting the thought schemas that make up our structured mind, opens up a possibility to perceive the world in its process, to harmonize with it in action.

In this context one has to note that Jakubowicz’s work begins much earlier than when he begins the activity of painting itself, that it encompasses everything he does, from cleaning up his studio to working on the foundation, on the very material used in the practice and preparing, indeed actually creating painting tools. In essence, we can say that the process starts from the moment the artist wakes up, from his daily morning routine, making a meal and drinking tea, leaving for his studio, taking a walk before work, and preparing the location and material for his activity. Even more precisely, we can say that this process actually never starts, just indeed as it never ends. Practice has no nominal end and all the routines of one’s life are part of it. Art is, after all, not “what” but “how” – as a result it is about a state of mind that enables and facilitates work of a certain level of quality. The very gestures of spreading around ink or paint are not separate from earlier actions, and so all work must be (and is) performed in a certain specific way. In a situation so understood, art is the very way of being and working in a distinctive state of non-mind, which is both a point of departure and an arrival.

Mind

The minimalism of means, techniques and tools used in Jakubowicz’s work is associated with the naturalness and spontaneity of how he operates. The point of departure here is an empty, non-mind – wuxin, a mental stance in which there does not appear any moment of evaluation of the forms that fill reality, consistently perceived as a kind of emptiness, silence. The meditative practice resulting in this state of mind enables one to perceive the world as a continuum of energy, flowing states of tension, rises and falls, fluctuations of potential, subtle but strong and constant movement of frequencies. This is an experience of the basic, and at the same time most subtle level. Work therefore begins where there is nothing to see, nothing to hear, and this level of reality is only perceived by an empty, calm and exceptionally sensitive mind. Strikes of the brush correlated with the movement of transformation – in keeping with the saying about Chinese swordsmanship that “the strongest blows are light as a feather” – are simple, effortless, and at the same time obvious. They yield a vision of the world on its energetic, most subtle level, a simple but extraordinarily dynamic vision, as the movement of the hand and at the same time of the brush or some other tool for practicing art, is excellently connected to fluctuations of energy, to change itself.

Frugality, or even a certain kind of technical-aesthetic asceticism, is not so much an objective as an effect of experiencing the aforementioned basic, most subtle level of reality. This minimalism is, de facto, the very same kind of necessity as the fact that water flows from above to below, which some would say is “consistent with its nature” but simply stems from the law of gravity. And so the frugality of means, tools, and imagery itself is a result of the gravity of the artist’s activity, caused by his method of experiencing the world. Whereas the structured mind, in the basic and unconscious experience, sees the world in a colorful and formally highly complicated depiction, the non-mind, thanks to a kind of meditative practice, manages to experience things in a way that ensures that the world does not lose any of its complexity and diversity, any of its abundance, but is created of basic, simple, and – one might say – refined relations and tensions, with countless possibilities of being structured. However, perceiving this requires that viewers of Jakubowicz’s works make a kind of effort that is similar to the kind he himself made, and continues to make.

The mind is reflected in practice, in our mode of action. Our state of mind affects our model, our means of cognition and perception, and also our way and strategy of action. It is reflected in gesture, in motion, in expressive intensity, in the strength of blows. Structured minds most often operate schematically and their movements are of meager strength. Occupied by many things at the same time, they cannot experience the world, as on this level of mental chaos only schematic representations of it are accessible to them. As a result, they employ mechanisms consistent with the cultural norm of models of action, which thereby are not only ill-fitted to the uniqueness of events, but also inauthentic, because they are not original but rather derive from the cultural “reservoir” of behaviors. Being learned, they enable us to react in some way to the volatility of reality, but this is neither an adequate reaction, nor one which has the power of an individual “wandering the way”.

Functioning in a state of non-mind means functioning in accordance with the movement of reality. Non-mind means overcoming rigid, immobile cognitive schemas, it also means the ability to experience the world in its movement and, thereby, to join in that movement.
The ancient Chinese described this way of functioning, of being in the world, as “harmony”. The movement of a brush (or, for instance, of a sword) is a reflection of one’s state of mind – weak and uncertain, attesting to a schematized mind unable to adapt to the world in motion, or strong and decisive, reflecting an empty mind in which there are countless and unmeasured possibilities. When one functions in a state of wuxin, the structure of a line, the dynamics of its motion, have the energy and dynamism of the very movement of reality, with which the agent and the effects of his work are both united. Movements of the brush are like gusts of wind, and the dynamics of a line have the power of a waterfall. The paintings that so emerge emanate the calm strength of nature.

World

The way Jakubowicz works, his understanding of the sense of existence and the practice of art, leans toward co-existing with the world, toward a way of being and a way of getting to know reality. Nevertheless, this is not about an analytical kind of experiencing quantities, but about experiencing qualities, and not about a description or presentation from the perspective of an independent outside observer, but about experiencing through joint action, joining together in the current of change, in movement, much as a swimmer experiences a river. And so the motivation for painting is here a desire not to “produce” beauty but to fill existence, it is a certain participatory way of being, in harmony with the world, in concord with its movement. In this context we come back to the importance of state of mind, which in the described reality has to be “switched” from observing and controlling to a mode of participation, experience, and involvement. We can say that it is not so much that Jakubowicz’s paintings become the world that surrounds him (which is an assertion made from the archaic perspective), but rather that Jakubowicz himself, including his action and its effects, becomes at one with the world, understood as a network, as relations, mutual action, complexity and motion.

1. An ancient Chinese philosopher, considered one of the founders of Taoist philosophy. His texts laid the foundations for the Chinese philosophy of the wenren circle.

Translated by Daniel J. Sax