Marek series, 1968

Made between 1968-1970, the series of portraits consists of nine plates which are the result of montaging a repeatedly reproduced and altered photograph of the artist’s friend, the sculptor Marek Lypaczewski. The subsequent works from the series were accordingly the effect of: juxtaposing 420 prints made from the initial photograph, developed for various lengths of time (Marek 1); cutting two photographs up into vertical and horizontal stripes and combining these (Marek 2); overlaying four prints which were either exposed to fire (Marek 3) or developed in various formats (Marek 4); fixing together random fragments of the cut photograph (Marek 5); sewing the torn photograph together using a thread (Marek 6); or combining prints cut into vertical stripes (Marek 7, Marek 8). In a biographical note included in the 1986 painting “Self-portrait” the artist thus described his work on the “Marek” series: “To the previously used principle of intensified expression I added a new one, the disciplined principle of the divided image, which prevented the uncontrolled manipulation of its elements. Expression, channeled by such a systematic framework, became a subject of reflection. Introducing discipline allowed for an analytical approach and shifted the sphere of activity from expression to the realm of intuition which supports analyses that reach far beyond the intimate world.”