Ryszard (Richard) Kiwerski
Project no.1
P A R A P A I N T I N G
The path of the sun to the canvas
"The surface of the globe is a single large virtual picture. I lay the canvas on the ground and the sun dictates its composition. As its trajectory progresses, the scene evolves. Between each distance there is time", says Richard Kiwerski.
What is parapainting?
1. The footsteps of the sun, birth of Para Painting
2. The evolution of the concept: the filters of the sun found in his studio
3. Filters made by hand
4. Materials testing - The different filters
5. Atrograms
1. The steps of the sun, birth of parapainting Richard Kiwerski has a highly personal and unique way of composing his paintings: his inspiration is driven by the movement of the sun, and thus by the shadows it casts on a surface—canvas or drawing paper. His first works are the literal transcription of these small shadows cast upon his table. He picks up a pencil and meticulously traces their contours, with patience, contemplating the passage of time. We have all observed the gradual progression of those brilliant patches of light, the dazzling yellow imprints left by the sun on a wall, floor, or any surrounding surface. Kiwerski made this his motto. The process is exhilarating: the artist is both a messenger and an inventor. He must be precise while having the freedom to be creative. “A ray of sunlight is like a thin thread, giving a first point of drawing,” he says. Technically, perceiving the advance of these bursts of light is only possible by momentarily looking away, allowing a different shadow to appear from one minute to the next, changing according to the obstacles between the sun and the surface it illuminates. New shadows can thus add to the painting and alter its trajectory in an instant. These fleeting moments, however, do not allow the artist to fully anticipate his next move; although he can guess, nothing is certain... a gust of wind, a cloud, a movement, a reflection... and everything can change. Then, with experience, he begins to imagine the composition. His own, that of the artist this time, and not merely the executor: shapes, choice of colours, depth, perspective, arrangement, thickness of the line... all reveal themselves, still guided by the sun's progression over time. Over time, Kiwerski revels in the infinite field of possibilities. His desire to create is inexhaustible. He is consumed by an all-encompassing, almost obsessive creative passion: for over 15 years, he created nearly one painting every day, sometimes two. A pi of connections between the external world and the deepest intimacy of his studio. The untamed side of his personality is rewarded; he can create, alone, at home, endlessly. He was then 75 years old when he invented this concept he called PARAPAINTING. Para—as in protection against the sun; PARAPAINTING—painting without a lampshade. “This painting thus offers an abstract image, but one that is the result of a real situation,” says Ryszard Kiwerski. Bruno Koper says that this series of chronographies or tempographies constitutes a form of reading: "an elusive trace of time left by the impression of light captured by various objects. All that remains for the artist is the precise recording of the contours, then filling them with colours to give depth to the composition of seconds and minutes that no longer exist.” At the beginning, he personalised his canvases by timestamping them: A painting started one fine morning in 1999 and completed 50 minutes later would be signed directly on the canvas: 10:00 > 10:50. This was his first PARAPAINTING. He had made an initial pencil sketch a year earlier, between 1997 and 1998. The project needed time to mature... Since this NUMBER 1, which he explicitly named “THE STEPS OF THE SUN,” each canvas would be numbered. This sketch from 1997, improved and reworked, then became NUMBER 2. On this NUMBER 2, which he called “3 CLOUDS,” he inscribed on the back all the foundations of his thought: time, space, movement, light, geometry, mathematics, perspective, astronomy, astrophysics, art, aesthetics, colour, composition, form, narrative, and architecture—all questions he would develop throughout his research and artistic expression. Diptychs, triptychs, and small series were also born.
Photo d'atelier.
1997/8 (recto)
LA LUMIERE
Poltora slonca 1+1/2 SOLEIL - ONE AND A HALF SUN
34 MINUTES
BEZ NAZWY SANS TITRE - WITHOUT NAME
DEUX SOLEILS
2. The evolution of the concept: sun filters found in his workshop It wasn't long before the sun's natural rays were no longer sufficient. He had to test the process further... to get closer to the sun, to get closer perhaps to the divine, or even to science, physics, gravity, space-time. So he becomes a master, a master architect, and he builds the foundations of his canvas, the architecture of which will always occur randomly and in tandem with his accomplice, the sun. He invents these foundations by adding new shapes that he finds in his studio - and not just by letting himself be guided by nature and the vagaries of his window: a tree root, a sculpture by his famous friend Jocz, a figurine exhibited in his home, a trinket, a pot of ice cream... Their function is to filter the sun. And when he wandered, it was the Concorde obelisk in Paris, for example, that he took as his model, or the Montmorency cemetery. These Ready Made objects, which he installs in his home and which only he can see, come to life on the canvas and become spheres, straight angles, geometry, curves, lines, anarchitecture, ovals, ellipses, squares... it all depends on the way the shadows move. When the shadows overlap, the painting becomes more complex. It develops the artist's senses and again he wants to go further...
3. Filters made by hand Over the ensuing years, the construction of the Renault factories just below his window, darkened the expanse of empty space opposite 1789, allée du Vieux Pont de Sèvre in Boulogne. This makes him all the more creative. The lines are straight and steep, perfect on sunny days, and blurred and random when the clouds come in. Grey days are torture. He consoles himself by photographing each stage of construction. Thousands of shots, which he used to dedicate to capturing the incredible sunsets he could see almost 360° from his home, became those of other foundations. A new stage of creation was born: he created his own shapes. A crumpled newspaper, a ball of paper, perfectly cut out circles... Every object becomes a subject. Everything is poetry. ‘Wszystko jest poezja’, as Edward Stachura used to say. Shapes are hard, rigid, forced. Or they are soft, sinuous, blown. The result on canvas is interdependent on so many factors. Each painting tells a story. Sometimes a particular day or a special event will be the subject of an annotation on the canvas, giving the story of the day even more bite.
La boule de papier froissé qui a servi de filtre solaire à ce triptyque.
Tableau peint le jour de la mort du Pape Jean-Paul II.
riptyque en hommage au sculpteur Pawel Jocz, un tableau la veille, le jour et le lendemain de sa mort :
4. Material experiments - The different cycles Over the years, it was the materials he experimented with. Metallic paint, fluorescent colors, India ink, glitter, silver or gold papers, 3D elements embedded on the canvas, pencil, felt-tip pen, and pigment. Here again, the infinite possibilities sparked his imagination. Fluorescent colors and metallic paints (gold, silver, bronze) appear most frequently. The flashy, luminous, and intense effect of fluorescent colors serves as an additional tool to express the brilliance of the sun. The reflective, iridescent, and shiny properties of metals also respond to this desire to imbue his canvases with the rays of the sun, beyond mere theory. In practice, these canvases shine, radiate... (synonyms of 'the sun shines'). His approach becomes mathematical; the forms he invents are the result of the previous day's painting, challenging himself anew each day. He digs deeper, searches, like a scientist seeking the perfect formula. This is why he references a quote by Albert Jacquard inscribed on the back of his second painting titled '3 Clouds': 'The interval between the two considered events, which we call 'time.' Time and space are inseparable. They form a whole, space-time. Time is one of the three dimensions that define all other quantities involved in mathematical models of the real world.'
5. The Artograms With the sun advancing according to its North-South ritual, Kiwerski invented a new concept: ARTOGRAMS. It's a series of paintings that, like anagrams, can be read from left to right and vice versa, from top to bottom and vice versa in perfect symmetry... An anagram (feminine word) - from the Greek ανά, ‘backwards’, and γράμμα, ‘letter’, anagramma: ‘reversal of letters’ - is a construction based on a figure of speech that inverts or permutes the letters of a word or group of words to extract a new meaning or word.
