One glimpse at the drawings/paintings by Filip Kurzewski and it seems we have an answer: the genre is Science Fiction. But this opinion, after we give some thought to what we are looking at, is discarded, quickly and with relief. Kurzewski is not another author of comic books about the future or an illustrator of novels set in times to come. Although both Lem and Tolkien would have enjoyed working with him, I believe his art is more evocative of light-hearted Kafka than these two writers. Kafka wrote about the contemporary times; the horrible adventures of Mister K do not take place in some unidentified sphere, but here and now, or perhaps in his own mind. These writings are about loneliness, alienation and isolation from one’s environment, about compassion. Moreover, we do not always deal with a complete text, furnished with a title; rather, these may be unfinished fragments which, at their formal level, need a comment or a reflection. Formally speaking, Kurzewski’s drawings / paintings are a lot like this, which explains the double naming; indeed, even now, while writing about them I do not know for sure what they are. Some are obviously drawings, executed with amazing expertise, with marker pens of varied width, some of them more or less used up, so lines produced by them come in diverse blacks and greys. Yet there are also drawings coloured with pencil crayons, paints, felt-tip pens, and then (or perhaps earlier) scratched and scraped, brightened and darkened, therefore such works can hardly be referred to as drawings. A new medium is emerging and it is likely to become more and more sophisticated – I first wrote ‘more advanced” – because Kurzewski does not shy away from working with computer which can especially be seen in his works related to architecture.

Kurzewski draws / paints the here-and-now, highlighting that which he thinks is important. He does that quite simply, by changing proportions between the elements of depicted landscapes. Because the landscapes in most cases comprise only objects and people, the change in the proportions reveals the relations between them, yet as a rule it is people who are outgrown by objects. This conveys a truth about the fate of man, with difficulty yet possibly also with curiosity, travelling the world full of surprises, challenged by circumstances to assume grand tasks, quite lonely because while wandering across the painted landscapes he does not have many companions. This is, indeed, the Kafkaesque “horror of life which fortunately most people are only sometimes aware of”, as Elias Canetti wrote about Franz Kafka’s letters to Felice Bauer, in which we can read about their love and engagement dying out for years. Of all works by Kurzewski, this is perhaps most clearly seen in The Portal of the Rennes Cathedral. The tiny man in front of the cathedral is barely noticeable, merging with the faintly outlined background and floor, rather like a greyish mist with silhouettes of scaffoldings and not a real surrounding of the cathedral. The latter obviously stands out, yet its portal does not look like a masterpiece of Gothic engineering. It has been turned into a serious piece of scenography, not theatrical but lifelike – because of its domination over the man standing in front with his head upwards. Seemingly oblivious of his presence, the force personified in the portal is preoccupied with her own affairs, rather at will setting darkness or light to parts of architectural structure, using the whole palette of colours to emphasize whatever she wants, shaking the gargoyle protruding towards the tiny visitor. We are a little bit frightened, yet also curiously wait to see what the force has in store for us; but actually the little man outside the cathedral does not look really scared. Perhaps he has already marched through other landscapes by Kurzewski, and these do not always look friendly.

These landscapes at times resemble junkyards with parts of various endeavours which failed to take off from Earth, or an abandoned military base with relics of transport aircrafts mixed with shipwrecks. That which could be recognized as natural landscape, in Kurzewski’s art appears in the distant background or in separate works. But we do get massive Teflon flowers, massive tubes, massive screws and clamps, complicated pipe connections, and coils abandoned on the side of the road. One might wonder about sheeting spread over parts of the area, as if these were some work sites – but what kind? Mechanics (junk collectors?) appear rarely, there are no signs of hard work, neither can we expect shower or sun, because we will not see clouds or the sky from which it could rain or shine. Perspective as well as distances and relations between objects seem rather unimportant in these works by Kurzewski; apparently if we took away something or added something it would be of little consequence, like it happens in a yard with machine parts about which we know nothing for sure, what they are designed for, or why they have been or will be built. All this is a modern version of Piranesi who packed the staircases in his drawings with something different because he did not know objects used today. Or perhaps we are dealing with a mechanistic alternative for Archimboldo, provided we manage to find an allegory in the images, but that should be left for each viewer alone to decide.

Such description of Kurzewski’s works could mean that the thing referred to as composition is missing; oh, no. Kurzewski must have acquired thorough knowledge of architectural drawing at the Faculty of Architecture, Warsaw University of Technology so, even if he wanted to conceal them, the rules of composing the layout and creating the drawing can be discerned. Indeed I would even say these are classical rules, by reference to the earliest period when that school of architectural drawing first emerged, and most definitely to the period immediately after the war. In those times drawings were

made to show the structure of the represented objects, and to highlight the contours, essence and shape of the overlapping silhouettes. Such were the drawings by Zygmunt Kamiński, Eugeniusz Szparkowski and Henryk Dąbrowski.

It is only recently when the role of drawing as a specific illustration of the form of building is gradually taken over by computer techniques, that the style which has emerged is more evocative of impression than of engineering nitty-gritty and it is also represented by outstanding painters such as Franciszek Maśluszczak and Włodzimierz Karczmarzyk, graphic artists such as Adam Sufliński. Seemingly Kurzewski does not utilize these concepts of our school of drawing. In his works you will not find water-colour landscapes; the handmade studies are forerunners for his computer-aided works, i.e. architectural designs.

One could say that some of these indeed were heralded by his drawings created by hand, which consequently, as autonomous works of art, were precursors to the New Architectures drawn by Kurzewski. The envisaged objects feature organic shapes; it is hard to say what material could be used to create them; their genesis reveals formation of not only hard but also soft matter, i.e. lights, colours, imagery and anecdote, or perhaps a serious tale. These are beautiful ideas, combining the tangible and the poetic world, like that neighbourhood in Ursynów, district of Warsaw, called The Valley of Butterflies. Even the name alone makes us feel free from worries faced wherever you live and work. The project is a response to the question what can be done for amorphous parts of the city, completely vague, depressive, with quite empty streets and hectares of urban wastelands, yet also comprising overcrowded houses – residential containers. Answer: The Valley of Butterflies exceeds all expectations and even without seeing the architectural concept one is forced to reflect on it. And the concepts aim at creating scenery for urban life which is unlike anything that exists;

moreover, the author cannot be accused of architectural ignorance. All this could be built, except that the aesthetics of the new buildings is still incomprehensible, perhaps even for investors and future residents. But this is what usually happens with designs departing from the well-tested aesthetics of Versailles towards a new aesthetics, where the houses do not have cuboid shapes, colours are colours, not originating from diluted paints designed for coating apparently real plaster and the art of landscaping combines all elements into a harmonious whole.

I think this is the quality which at this stage is most clearly visible in Filip Kurzewski’s work. His work is autonomous and intellectually coherent. Its specific manifestations are harmoniously linked. The drawings used to turn into woven images, then colour has gradually gained importance, to be followed with three dimensional works, modest sculptures and sumptuous architecture. Despite appearances, this is not hermetic art. One might even argue that this is “street art” reflecting the best meaning of the term, that is representing human environment most frequently situated in the street, in public places, locations shared with others, and art shown in such a way as to contain as little dissociation from others as possible. I think this is what has inspired the previously mentioned style of drawing, a bit like comic books or MTV-type stage design, because these are forms of artistic medium which in the future will be most appealing to large groups of art consumers. And I am writing this despite the fact that I am far from being enthusiastic about video clips, except for some, those which present real art, just like that which is offered to us by Filip Kurzewski.


Professor of Architecture, Doctor Honoris Causa Sławomir Gzell