The Fall of the Man I Don’t Like

In his work The Fall of the Man I Don’t Like, Olaf Brzeski attempts to materialise his struggle with the conception of a work which is yet to be created, and to translate his own emotional condition into the medium of a film. The self-reflexive attempt to penetrate the awareness and verbalise the influx of thought has resulted in a work which is rich in meanings and which offers an opportunity to look not only at the creative process with its internal and external determiners, but also, in the more universal dimension, at human nature.

Brzeski’s work touches upon the rarely undertaken subject of an artist’s failure or, in this case, the possibility of a failure. The film was recorded in the artist’s studio; narration in its background suggestively renders the inner fight with creative impotence: the turbulent flow of thoughts, the feverish engrossment in the forthcoming exhibition, the feeling of being under pressure, the irritation when, in this difficult moment, the absurdities of everyday life (e.g. the administrative obligation of painting the window frame white) become an additional burden. In a moment of inspiration that constitutes the turning point of the narrative, these negative emotions rather paradoxically give birth to a satisfactory idea for a work. The artist’s imagination generates a situation, in which a disliked neighbour irritatingly insistent with respect to the window frames, is struck with a heart attack, and through the medium of a drawing on paper the excellent idea is captured. The much-desired inspiration emerges from the dark, repressed side of personality that is laid mercilessly bare by the stream of words.

In the sketch, a fanciful notion acquires reality and turns into a prefiguration of the work proper. Yet the meaning ascribed to it by the author by far exceeds the traditional function of an initial record, the preparatory stage of work. Brzeski recreates the figure from the drawing, line by line, in metal bars painted fluorescent blue. A sketch mutates into a sculpture, the finished work. The introspective contemplation of the nature of creativity is continued in the reflections on matter and material, on the fluid boundary between sketch and work, and on the relationship between an idea and the ways of recording it, as well as the purely technical struggle with the classic study of human figure.

Izabela Kopania

translated from Polish by Klaudyna Michałowicz