Choroba na cielesność

We are potential carcasses. When I go into a butcher’s shop I always think it is surprising that I am not there instead of the animal.

Francis Bacon

I have only one faith, absolute and certain, which gives me a glimmer of inner serenity: after death there is nothing.

Andrzej Wróblewski

(From a letter to his wife, c. 1953)

You are lying on the floor… It is cold. Can you feel it?

A stark, cold landscape. Huddled up, you are afraid to raise your head and look at the endless whiteness. Where are you? Are you trembling? From the cold? From fear?

The skin is coarse and rough, yet soft and delicate in places.

Dry and damp. You have a scent. You breathe. You swallow saliva. You secrete semen. You bleed… You are.

One might say that the subject of Rafał Sobiczewski’s paintings is the body.

The body… Too obvious and real to speak of openly and directly. Everything has already been said, painted and photographed. What more is there to add? The body… Natural. Biological. It has always been with us (or: it has always been us). But are we body or spirit? At the same time, the body is an obsession of contemporary culture. It has become an object. An object in our hands. It has become a means to our small desires and pleasures. We believe it can be shaped. Using the available methods, we improve it, striving to attain some imagined physical ideal. Every day science gives us more ways to do so, yet the body continues to elude us. The more we try to tame it, to confine it within the limits of our ideas and capabilities, the more elusive it remains, revealing ever new areas beyond our intervention. Illnesses, threats, discontinuities, doubts. And then there is shame: that we do not fully control every involuntary reflex, the circulation of bodily fluids, illness or desire; that we are not who we would like to be. This physicality touches and repels us. We extend our “disembodied” sensations and surrender to electronic extensions. We transcend ourselves into virtuality, as though wishing to forget the painful, real fact of our existence. The body simply is. With every passing minute it makes us more acutely aware of this fact and demands that its presence be acknowledged. Here and now. In a moment, after all, it will be different.

Does space imprison you, or make you feel safe? Your skin is delicate, almost transparent. Can you see the blue and red threads of your veins? Why are you hiding? May I look you in the eyes?

Rafał Sobiczewski grapples with the question of corporeality, although he himself would probably deny it. The corporeality of his paintings is not sensual; it is fleshy and physical. It confirms our physical existence. Here and now. Suspended between birth and death. For after death there is nothing… With each painting, Sobiczewski’s figures become increasingly corporeal, defined, heavy, physical and tangible. It is as though the artist were “scanning” them, X-raying them piece by piece in an attempt to capture a trace of life. The relationship between body and space seems crucial to the character of his painting. In earlier works the figures were more linear and skeletal, resembling structures deprived of corporeal substance. As though uncertain, clinging desperately to space, they tried to confirm their existence. Describing those paintings, Sobiczewski wrote that he “shows the human being as relativity”, and that “space arises from the body and imprisons it”. Now the figures exist independently, conscious of their essence; or rather, instead of defining themselves in relation to space, they enter into an equal relationship with it. This exchange, however, is not based on harmonious coexistence. It is a struggle between two forces, a conflict that causes deformation and devastation on both sides. The figure reacts to space and assumes a particular position under its influence, while space deforms the body, assigning it a confined place in which it is meant to remain. The figures in Sobiczewski’s paintings are most often shown curled up in a foetal position: primal and natural. As though threatened, they seek safety in this posture. They appear to remain dormant, in a state of lethargy. Between life and death. Have they not yet been born? Or are they already dead? This “in-between” is unsettling. The figures are solitary and depicted one at a time, intensifying the sense of danger. Even in a diptych, each part depicting a single figure exists independently; the relationship between them is highly subtle and ambiguous. There must be distance between them, a break, a fissure, so that the relationship does not become too close, overt or obvious. Distance is necessary. The figures exist separately and do not communicate. They live alone, absorbed in their own existence.

You sink into corporeality. Redness. Flesh. The pulsing of fluids. The trembling of muscles. Is it drawing you in, or do you want to immerse yourself in it? Is it corporeality that guides me, or the mind? Are they together or apart?

The corporeality of Sobiczewski’s paintings has another dimension, bound up with their very materiality. It asserts itself from our first encounter with them. Their large scale and the paint’s vivid concreteness intensify the material character of the experience. We must see these paintings physically. Stand face to face with them. Remain alone with them. Feel their weight, size, form and colour. We must experience them physically, as if in defiance of the electronic availability of most images. These are not paintings “on demand”. It is they that make demands. They require a certain effort if we are to reach them and be absorbed by them. They demand reflection. These are not paintings “as comfortable as an armchair”, offering primarily aesthetic sensations. Being with them is difficult, not to say painful. It forces us to penetrate deep into the painting. Deep into ourselves. It is not only their subject matter that provokes this particular pain, but also their form: the asymmetry of the composition, likewise “uncomfortable” and “tormenting”, and the minimal means employed. The figures are placed within an empty, abstract space or a place marked out only by lines that form something like a cage — suggesting nothing, excluding all sentimentality. Beyond it there is nothing… Painting is, analogously, a long road towards materialisation.

Where does my body end? At the tip of my fingernail? Does it extend across the span of my arms? If I lower them, am I no longer there? Do I use my body to mark out my space, or does space determine my boundaries? I cling to this imagined space so that I will not experience the whiteness of non-being… I am afraid.

There is something difficult in Sobiczewski’s painting, something that makes us feel an unbearable torment: the painful authenticity of the painterly gesture and thought. Looking at his paintings causes almost physically perceptible pain and anguish, although at the same time we sense a trace of a peculiar tenderness towards the figures depicted, as though we were almost physically experiencing the artist’s struggle with his vision. Numerous overpaintings and changes of form and structure are visible on the surface. It is as if the layered paint recorded a stream of consciousness, documenting thought and its painterly materialisation. Looking at these works, we conduct an archaeological excavation: removing the repainted layers one by one in an attempt to uncover what lies beneath the surface. A labyrinth of thoughts, struggles and doubts. Like an anatomy lesson: peeling away successive layers of epidermis to reach living flesh. Corporeality itself. Sobiczewski’s painting has something of improvisation about it, as though it were an attempt, an exercise, never attaining final perfection. This activity strives for a deliberate awkwardness or ineptitude, for a deformation approaching the grotesque: “Whatever takes on a body — an idea, a being, anything at all — becomes grotesque. Accomplishment brings frustration”, to repeat Cioran.

What is on the other side? Silence? Darkness? Stillness? Nothingness? When you sink into the void, will you stop suffering?

The artist appears to equate the corporeal and spiritual aspects of existence. They form a unity. This is the only perspective of our existence. As in an icon, which, while being a materialisation, is simultaneously a revelation of the universal. The sense of existential torment, despair, suffering and solitude that death will bring to an end. Kierkegaard’s “sickness unto death”, one is tempted to say. Yet the aim is not to make us feel the immensity of our own torment, but to make us pause for a moment, think, and detach ourselves from the reality around us. To feel physically the weight of existence and the shape of thought, and to focus on ourselves. Here. Now. For a moment. We are.

Can you feel pain? May I sit beside you? Help me. Give me your hand — then I will know where I end…