Honorary Mention

 

Joanna Leszczyńska  | Poland

 

Human X 

Human XI 

 

serigrafia | 2018 | 100 x 183 cm

 

The inspiration for the Human series is the fascination with the possibilities of the human mind, standing in opposition to the horror that awakes in us the power with which we are able to destroy. It is a reflection on the question of who is a person? What is the world that surrounds us? How to understand this unique process that we call life? Is our body just a perfect machine, whose functions can be calculated and understood using mathematics? Will our existence forever escape all definitions, and the boundary behind which we find true knowledge will never be exceeded by us? The basis for creating prints were, among others, mathematical formulas, architectural drawings showing fragments of buildings, lines, dimensional numbers and a simplified human figure. Symbols related to the world we know.

 

Prints are made with use of a unique printing technique employing  a reductive paint. This printing is inherent in the chemical removal of the dye covering the fibers of the fabric. A characteristic feature of the works is the method of building the image by means of overlapping fragments of prints from the screenprint matrix. In classical printmaking techniques, a significant part of the expression and creation is generated during the preparation of the matrix, but the case of prints presented here is different. The most creative phase lays in printing process. Molds placed on the matrix do not bring into being particular, full images that are ready to be printed on the surface. They are also not a collection of graphics fragments that, after printing in the right order and place, create an image. Screen-printing templates are in this case a set of artistic forms, thanks to which it will be possible to build an image. In practice, this means that none of the presented works was created as a separate project, exposed and then duplicated by means of screen printing, but it was built by hand, directly on the fabric, which makes each one unique and as such does not exist on the matrix.