History
First came the cuboid...
Once I was charmed by a little piece of fibreboard with glued edges. The piece itself was beautiful. It had proper thickness, width and height. It is a perfect thing to hang on the wall - I thought. But there was something missing - something that would highlight its beauty. I looked through the window and.....got it! Yes! It was supposed to look like that! A board as white as snow with black pins immitating trunks joined to it. Despite the fact the idea was never put into practice, it did leave a clue. I already had two pieces of a puzzle - a cuboid and contrast. The search continued...
Eureka!
Soon the third component appeared - a geometric solid. Even though those three elements were enough to be interrelated, "the machine" was yet to be started. There was still something missing. Everything looked like sandcastles in various shapes. I was waiting for a miracle, a brainwave. And it finally happened! Just like that! A childish fun of throwing stones into tar turned out to be a great discovery. The stones wouldn't sink - instead they would settle on the thick, black, glossy surface of the substance. From then on, ideas would flow and the solids would take on different shapes - fish, fire, birds, stars, trees, planets etc. Nothing was impossible!
The crisis and... the Cosmos
As the time passed by, the intensity of ideas decreased. I found it difficult to carry out matters I had only superficial knowledge of. I was hit by a crisis once again .... It lasted for some time and I wasnât sure whether the projects I had run before would stand the test of time. It was philosophy that gave me a helping hand then. Thanks to it, I rediscovered one of my projects, The Stars, both in a philosophical and an artistic aspect. According to my philosophy the Cosmos is a large organism living its own life and the Earth is just a tiny piece of it. The stars, on the other hand, constitute a hidden space which I am able to imagine with the help of the celestial bodies. My philosophical considerations and formal search led me to a final solution. A bas-relief composed of solids joined together and interacting with each other turned out to be the best way of implementing my ideas. The fact that there is a relation between two different solids is inescapable.
Endless space for creation
As I realized that in art the importance of philosophical content is minor compared to that of the formal content, I opened the next door. Despite the fact that the doorway is narrow I can see an endless space for creation. This space stands as an uninterrupted possibility of seeing, listening, touching and smelling. It is a possibility of using geometrical forms to associate, select and manifest the world around me. Colourful solids arranged together create the theme of the forms that emerge from a cuboid. The compositions are expressed by the way the open space is built up. Such solid forms stand as a contradition to existing objects as far as their relation is concerned. These new objects, created to emanate with energy, animate the viewers to experience which, in turn, is closely related to recognizing. As I learnt the construction of the universe, I learnt and understood the construction of sculpture.
New experiences
A bas-relief is similar to a picture regardless of the subject and the method of creating it. The reality is contained in one of its halves while the other one only pretends to be it. There is only one way of reception in a bas-relief. A sculpture, on the other hand, can be viewed from different perspectives and, consequently, provide us with various experiences. Pointed-up tops of pyramids force the open space to vibrate. They are receptive. Investigating the environment they gently touch the air. At the same time the block bears the load of the whole cuboid. It is a firm base of the construction, like a spine lifting up the intellectual part of the sculpture. To tell the truth means to be able to portray oneself in proper rations with the ambient reality.
Robert Kaleta 1998