20th Century Art: A Different Perspective
20th Century Art: A Different Perspective
Property from the Collection of Anne and William Frej
Jan Berdyszak
Passe-par-tout XIV
Lot Closed
November 9, 02:12 PM GMT
Estimate
6,000 - 8,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Property from the Collection of Anne and William Frej
Jan Berdyszak
Polish
1934 - 2014
Passe-par-tout XIV
signed, inscribed and dated JAN / BER / DYSZ / AK / 1993 - 1994 akryl on the reverse
inscribed PASSE-PAR-TOUT XIV. on the reverse
diptych, acrylic on canvas laid on panel
27.7 by 118.8cm., 11 by 46¾in. ii) 33.5 by 118.5cm., 14 by 46¾in. (2)
Purchased directly from the artist in 1999
The present work is part of Berdyszak’s Passe-Partout cycle. In this series Berdyszak reversed the traditional relation between the empty and not-empty. In the centre of these works he creates an empty space framed by a ‘passe-partout’. This passe-partout attracts the viewers attention whilst at the same time directing the gaze towards the empty centre of the work. What is usually associated with a painting – canvas, paint – becomes a frame, margin, supplement, something more minor, deprived of its former position. The supremacy of the visible is usurped in favour of the invisible, intangible, imagined. Rejecting the domination of eyesight and the visible enables the artist and viewer to get closer to the non-presentable, to that which exists but cannot be pictured.
Berdyszak felt that in a world of electronically simulated hyper reality art should sharpen the human senses by constituting a world of individual experience and sensation. The emptiness at the centre of the composition is thus active rather than passive: it is an opening through which one can notice the existence of another reality. Berdyszak wanted to show that everything which we can see and visualise in the form of speculation or observation has its source in the invisible – in our imagination, the activity of our mind, in our intuitive understanding of the world. It is due to the continual activity of the human mind that the world assumes for us this visual shape and not another, what Heidegger called the pre-understanding of Being.
Through the combination of the expressible with the inexpressible, the represented with the non-represented, and the internal with the external a certain ambivalence is created: the surrounding space intrudes into the picture, co-exists with it, becomes an integral part of it.
The cut-outs opening Berdyszak’s works to all that exists before and behind the picture are reminiscent of the slashes in Luciano Fontana’s canvases, where the cuts in the canvas can also be seen as an attempt to escape from the world of representation to the true existence of things, from the world of appearance to the authentic Being. Similarly, Giacometti explored this idea in his sculpture Mains tenant le vide.
Berdyszak felt that in a world of electronically simulated hyper reality art should sharpen the human senses by constituting a world of individual experience and sensation. The emptiness at the centre of the composition is thus active rather than passive: it is an opening through which one can notice the existence of another reality. Berdyszak wanted to show that everything which we can see and visualise in the form of speculation or observation has its source in the invisible – in our imagination, the activity of our mind, in our intuitive understanding of the world. It is due to the continual activity of the human mind that the world assumes for us this visual shape and not another, what Heidegger called the pre-understanding of Being.
Through the combination of the expressible with the inexpressible, the represented with the non-represented, and the internal with the external a certain ambivalence is created: the surrounding space intrudes into the picture, co-exists with it, becomes an integral part of it.
The cut-outs opening Berdyszak’s works to all that exists before and behind the picture are reminiscent of the slashes in Luciano Fontana’s canvases, where the cuts in the canvas can also be seen as an attempt to escape from the world of representation to the true existence of things, from the world of appearance to the authentic Being. Similarly, Giacometti explored this idea in his sculpture Mains tenant le vide.