Krystyna Grzybek – diagrams

The creative output to date of Krystyna Grzybek, presented within the last few years on exhibitions in Poland, reflects her creative quest for aesthetic conceptualizations and ideas that are expressed owing to her technical brilliance. The artist has explicit tendencies to create balanced, understated and coherent visual representations, whose artistic value results from excellent usage of forms of pure abstract geometrical beauty.

The series of collages presented, titled 'Diagrams', continues and develops the artistic concept that has been previously performed with the usage of linen and jute. The basic material for works on display are Japanese crepe paper and rice paper. These fragile materials are used to arrange very well balanced, geometrical, skilfully positioned depictions that are characterized by very explicit order, both horizontally and vertically. Texture is coarse, colours are excellently selected and harmonious, and their chromatic diversities do not create strong contrasts but rather build very soft and subdued rhythmicity.

These abstract compositions of colours and shapes, despite their subjection to strict rules, result from conscious reflection, have their structural sense and rationality. Therefore, in the works of Krystyna Grzybek, they tend to become a characteristic emotional code, a system of signs imbued with emotions and affections, offering thus visual pleasure and provoking reflection. They also encourage to admire and contemplate.

Piotr Siemaszko

Over the horizon series

Azure, celadon green, orange, purple, red, ochre, combinations of warm and cool colours, pure and broken, harmonies of tones and shades…. Colours of water, sky and light…. Colourful monotypes by Krystyna Grzybek evidence unique colour sensitivity; they are exceptionally charming, they are a delight to the eye and they soothe the mind. Monotyping is a technique of surprises and sometimes chance determines final solutions. In the works by Krystyna Grzybek the play of colours derives from carefully prepared aesthetic concepts. Colourful planes seem to record slow movement of nature, its quiet pulse and unique unpredictability, yet the dynamics of the elements becomes more stable, and their amorphous shapes seem to form a series of decorative patterns. Colourful streaks determine the horizontal and vertical order, separate the centre from the edges. Scattered patches and point meet and separate, concentrating usually in more explicitly suggested central locations, and the structure of hand-made paper creates its texture and makes us feel its material substantiality more intensely. Excellent usage of the potential of material and techniques, the awareness of the work being an autonomous and flexible entity, sensitivity to colours and the order instinct result in an exceptionally successful artistic effect and give sheer aesthetic pleasure.

P. Siemaszko

Fabric and structures. On the artistic output of Krystyna Grzybek

Krystyna Grzybek deals with designing, painting, art fabric and stained glass. Two, formally different, series of works presented on this display are only some of a few ways of the artist's expression, at the same time evidencing her artistic potential, manifestation of mature and crystallized expressive power which determines both the areas of artistic fascinations and the direction of artistic quest.

The first series, titled "In the Net", presents collages made of textiles, sometimes with added thick impasto streaks or patches of acrylic paint in a variety of colours. These works can be defined as geometrically rigorous: this is expressed in the domination of geometrical figures, in either vertical or horizontal structure of images, in balanced and symmetrical composition as well as in economical and rational use of artistic signs. These compositions rely on properly compiled contrasts of colours and materials of varying textures. The artist uses compact and close-knit material and connects it with a net, owing to which materials and colours interweave and merge; this creates an interesting and decorative effect.

The second series titled "The Walls" is a collection of monotypes on hand-made paper which, due to its basis weight and surface type, creates perceptible texture of depictions. What is typical of these works is a bigger, more expressive freedom of painting, although still the artist is prone to being synthetic, keeping order and compositional arrangement. An important role – both in the aesthetic and semantic sense – is played by colour which artistically dominates each work; at the same time it is a means of artistic expression, a way to express emotions, moods, a sudden experience, to visualize intangible experiences that can only be reflected and perceived by art.

Piotr Siemaszko