Szukam indywidualności | Seeking Individuality

At the heart of Andrzej Ciesielski's (1946-2022) work was a passion for collecting, respect for everyday life and the ability to creatively process those fragments of it that are considered secondary and unimportant. The artist emphasised that he was interested in things that were apparently uninteresting, unattractive, banal - unnecessary things that he brought back to life with a bit of pity and a bit of irony. Ciesielski liked to work sequentially, he always produced long series of works, willing to use different techniques. He was a master of bricolage and a precise constructor of surprising visual compositions, extracting rhythm, order and aesthetic sense from everyday refuse - scraps of paper, used public transport tickets, lighters or matches found on the street - as in the 1999 work Looking for Individuality. This project involved dozens of cardboard sheets filled with rows of matches. The artist presented these works in exhibitions in multi-element arrangements covering large wall surfaces. In 2004, twenty boards from the series found their way into the collection of the National Museum in Szczecin. In Looking for Individuality, non-normative matchsticks, those that do not fit into the current pattern and evade standardisation, are the element that dynamises the composition. They are too big, too thin, curved or fused. These deviations from the norm become an expression of the affirmation of individuality that breaks the monotonous uniformity. Magdalena Lewoc