Windows on Utopia — paintings of Urszula Wilk

(...) Urszula Wilk has always been focused on establishing her own rules of the painting game. It seems, that in her case these rules are not an a priori defined set of principles but something she searches within the very creative process. Hence, these rules emerge at the time of painting (gradually, or by leaps) and she tries to provide the language of her painting with the environment in which the painting ‘idiom’ could grow into an autonomous self-sufficient structure. In her case there are no external or universal rules, there is no ideal matrix or recipe how to create (and later perceive) a painting. However, it is not the case of the lack of any rules, of acting as one likes. The problem is that today a work of art (or, in other words, the artist in the process of creation) must by itself find and establish the rules that would enable its existence. This situation is difficult both for the artist and for the recipient. First the artist and later the recipient face challenges that remind one of those a person thrown into a fairy tale would face – it would first have to recognize the rules of the game played. I consciously use the word ‘game’, since if it is a game, then identity is at stake, as Hans-Georg Gadamer has already established. Let me remark that we mean both the identity of the artist, the identity of the work of art, and the identity of the recipient who will participate in the game created by Urszula Wilk. (...)

Marek Śnieciński