Balancing Exercises

Drawings explaining the rudiments of first aid, showing images of fundamental “scouting” skills, or physical fitness exercises were all part of the extensive iconography of handbooks fulfilling the postulates of forming and shaping the spiritual and bodily fortitude of the youth. The Balancing Exercises series of paintings by Karol Radziszewski is peopled by images from such handbooks (originally published in the first half of the 20th century). The artist decontextualises figures found in books, transforming their formal and semantic space. Instructional imagery is deprived of its primary function and bond to the written word and is transferred to primed canvas, recreating with a brush the composition of old drawings. Most scenes are framed as if in a comic book, which emphasises their autonomy.

The Kolekcja II paintings form a separate set within the series. They are based on renderings of peculiar skills useless in everyday life, typical of arcade or other games requiring the player to overcome special obstacles before passing to the next level. Grotesque tasks, such as supporting a piece of paper vertically on the nose, carry the promise of reaching yet another degree of initiation. Competitions with the goal of gaining a championship title or self-improvement do not involve any kind of pragmatic skills at all.

The Balancing Exercises series reveals a specific instructional aspect, imperceptible in print: to master the skills depicted in the drawings, both the body and the personality have to follow rigorous discipline. The same rule applies to physical exercise and to “tasks to perform” requiring certain agility. The body comes first, as an object of exercise. Some of the images resemble portrait renderings, moments captured suggest actual real-life occurrences, figures become more important than actions. Radziszewski deprived handbook illustrations of their original nature, emphasising the human presence complete with the physical and spiritual regime humans are occasionally inclined to yield to.

Izabela Kopania

translated from Polish by Aleksandra Sobczak