Paweł Grzes – Extremum Europae

Paweł Grześ

Born in 1983. Lives in Grodek, near Bialystok. In 2009 graduated from the Institute of Creative Photography at the Silesian University in Opava (Chech Republic). He also graduated in computer science from the Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology at the Warsaw University of Technology. So far he produced a number of original photographic projects, from which the most recognizable – entitled “Mileszki” – is also most popular and presented both in Poland and abroad. He meticulously utilizes the potential offered by the medium of photography, which he combines with elements of video. He presents, in an extremely insightful manner and influenced by his personal experience and observation, the problems of contemporary inhabitants of borderlands and their coexistence with land. His harsh view is ruthlessly objective, but not devoid of subtlety. With brutal honesty, he unravels the condition of people and places.

Exhibitions:
2009 „Mieleszki", SIEGesIKONen / Icons of Victory, Berlin
2008 „Młodzi Artyści", Samsung Art Master 2008, Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw
2008 „Mieleszki", Biala Gallery, Lublin
2005 „Mieleszki", Visegrad Group Congress, Budapest
2005 „Mieleszki", Mieleszki

…Pawel Grzes photographically documents the permanence of historical past. Our “edge of Europe” suffers its last spasms before a leap into better future. We are not capable of building human fate for ourselves. We still look at someone else’s well-being, ready to become farmhands for foreign lords, as long as they are kind and don’t flog our backs. The borderlands did not get rid of the attributes of Slavic slavery…

…only slender pine trees sway and berries bloom for nobody.

“Edge of Europe” Sokrat Janowicz

Beyond the border

The border, which Pawel Grzes studies, divides many things. It divides Poland from Belarus, and therefore the European Union from the East, which spreads away from the „main“ Europe. On both sides of the border people’s values and political systems, currencies, languages, religions and future perspectives are different.

The border has special meaning for people living in its shade; it’s the sturdiest point of reference for these areas and a symbol of political, economic and cultural divisions.

The border is a monster which not all can pass. It has its own officials, guarding and rationing the passage to the other side.

Despite the divisions, which are not hard to draw, we watch the people from the other side of the picture with great interest and sympathy. We see photographs, on which the author most often places the people photographed in central positions. The optics of the gaze is subtle; it shows problems of the contemporary man of the borderlands and his existence in the land. With brutal honesty, he uncovers the condition of people and places. The author’s visible deference influences us, the viewers.

Pawel Grzes in his cycle “Extremum Europae, similarly to Zofia Rydet in “Sociological Record”, tries to stop the time, the inevitable passing of people, traditions and meanings of many objects connected to them – this time in the context of border.

I was born in Armenia, where I spent the first half of my life. When I was forced to leave, I ended up in Poland, where I remain perfectly happy. Before that, I wouldn’t dare to dream that most borders would not scare me. Now, as a citizen of Poland, I feel the lightness of flight and freedom. Since 1992 I’ve been living in a country which changes rapidly from year to year. At the beginning of the 90’s no-one could predict the scale and direction of changes we are witnessing. I think that now no-one can guess what will happen in the areas divided by that border, and how will it happen. I’m aware that borders and political systems change, but the memories remain.

A beautiful photography is a good testimony of its time. Colouristicly sophisticated compositions of the borderlands’ photos stimulate our urge to travel on both sides of the border, that lasts.

Sarmen Beglarian