BWA Contemporary Art Gallery in Katowice

Fragment of an interview by Roman Lewandowski with Jacek Rykała:
R.L.: In Silesia, like probably elsewhere, regular as well as informal artistic groups were appearing in result of accepting similar attitudes or simply because of the fact of living in the same region. Your artistic activity has never been characterised with such common interests. Where does your attitude come from? Is it a kind of contesting the place, time and people, or rather the decisive role is played by some more personal, biographical or other causes?

J.R.: I think that the existential thinking about the man is at the grounds of it all. Apart from this, I should add that in a sense I feel as if I was led by someone, I don’t know whoever it could be. It can sound mystical, but it always happened somehow and went well. At the time of ending studies, I had a studio at a garret of an old house in Katowice. Beside my studio, there were also three apartments there, in which three old women lived. Each of them was different. And I was in good relation with them. I have helped one of them with shopping and other everyday things… It was a kind of vivisection; today I rather wouldn’t have the courage to do something like that. Polish Nobel prize-winner poet, Miłosz once said about it in beautiful words that the older a man is, the more he is compassionate towards others and towards himself. And it was my case. Looking at it from certain time distance, I could say that — meanly speaking — they were my raw material. In a way it is understandable, since I have read certain number of books and my sensibility allows me to see certain signs of existence and the time which passes away very clearly... It was strange, even for me, for I was then only twenty-something and I shouldn’t see it, but I did. And I quickly realised that it was connected with the way of artistic life. I could see something what normally was not in place or didn’t result from man’s construction. And something strange happens then. And just the same was with me. Speaking more vividly I’d rather give an example; passing by a gate I was feeling transcendence. Today it can sound stupid, but then I could see me myself after thirty years. I was aware that everything that happens is only a fraction of second. It was truly an intense feeling; simultaneously — what’s very important — it didn’t depress me. In such situations, entering that area people usually become depressed. My case was different… maybe because I was finding fulfilment in artistic activity and because a new value was appearing for me, which I followed. It was the aesthetics and the area I was a part of which, as if I were someone completely new.