Introduction to another Thesaurós
The data and documents made available on this website are a compendium of the work and thought of the European artist Michal Martychowiec. His notes, gnomes and texts form the nucleus of this collection. I would like to call these Martychowiec’s historical-aesthetic meditations.
The constantly growing archive is not unlike an encyclopedia, a dictionary of keywords 1. It is also a diary of an unusual and anachronistic way of thinking. It is a digital book that itemizes, and the systematic representation of a complex cosmos.
The idea is to jointly comprehend and reveal, from rich references and allusions, a universe of works of art, living avatars, cryptic yet intelligible narratives, media and symbols. The artist himself composes his work in ever-crossing narratives; his figures, sometimes grotesque faces, sometimes saints, are our alter egos. They are mirror images and dark crystals, into which we gaze together.
Martychowiec’s work, simultaneously hermeneutic, magical and analytical, is the expression of a flamboyant and sharp, existential and yet serene thinking. His strange figures, the Panda, Josephine or old St. Thomas are enthusiastic. These auto-poetic avatars, familiar entities in history, are elements of a rich world of symbols and images; our mirror image world, in which we recognise a new cosmogeny in statu nascendi.
For me, having had the privilege to accompany Martychowiec in dialogue and in a curatorial way, as publisher, business partner and friend since a few year, his work never fails to astonish. Constantly surprised and moved by its hitherto unknown vibrancy of artistic expression. Sometimes it even seems to me as if the numinous, history in its gravity, has penetrated the processes of form-finding and narrativization of a dazzling young oevre.
The archive Complete Knowledge, arranged by key words and in chronological order, conveys the reasoning and background behind a wide-ranging creative process; it reveals the trains of thought governing a meticulous search for form and tale.
JMH Schindele | Artistic Director of Bublitz
Tempelhof, Berlin. October 2018
1) The word encyclopedia comes from the Koine Greek ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία,transliterated enkyklios paideia, meaning “general education” from enkyklios (ἐγκύκλιος), meaning “circular, recurrent, required regularly, general”and paideia(παιδεία), meaning “education, rearing of a child”; together, the phrase literally translates as “complete instruction” or “complete knowledge”.
Quoted after: παιδεία, Henry George Liddell. Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. Revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones with the assistance of Roderick McKenzie. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1940.