May 21, 2016
Artist Name: Koralia Maciej
Question 1: How did you get to where you are now?
I started my adventure with printmaking in 2000 at the Fine Arts Academy in Cracow where I developed a screen printing technique
Question 2: What is your thought process and/or the material process behind your work?
Since the beginning, this medium gives me an opportunity to create large scale prints which can be modified simultaneously while maintaining formal relationships between individual graphics in the narrative mode. To me graphic art is a dialog with a surrounding space. It is a process of recreation and manipulation of observed fragments of landscapes, shapes, details, and sometimes methods of interpretation of the parameters of solutions recorded in a memory. Every time, printing itself is a discovery as I am giving structure to what initially appears fragmentary and even chaotic. It allows me to build an image through adding layers of partial blueprints complemented by flat surfaces of colour when developing desired composition. The simplicity of geometry and reduced colour palette are the methods of building the form, emphasise details and intensify expression. I also introduce a texture which appears as a consequence of several coats of paint and patterns which can be discovered at a certain angle when carefully watched.
Question 3: Have you ever gotten halfway through with a project or idea and changed direction and why?
Every project is a new experience, new conceptual process which sometimes spans over years and gigabytes of material collected for further analysis and development. My art is a continuity. One project leads to another developing the sense of reference. The idea grows and changes along with the form, spinning around one motive while embracing encountered incidents but always reflecting architectural and spatial relationships. Composing in time and space. Rhythm.
Question 4: What is your idea for Hidden Door 2016?
The artwork will address an idea of the conceptual architecture as a process of re-creation of visual ‘voids’ and filling them with new meanings. Similarly to previous projects, it will refer to an ‘open form’ theory based on a concept of jigsaw puzzles, where parts of recreated reality are subjected to the narrative process of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction – an ongoing creation of the space between. I will develop further my visual language by experimenting with a new printing method – intaglio print with the use of large scale industrial elements. Effectively, by concentrating on light nuances created by an emboss, I will reduce colour palette to juxtapose imagined and real image as well as real material with its imprint.
From 27 May – 4 June 2016 Hidden Door will return to the amazing disused street lighting depot behind Kings Stables Road in Edinburgh. Click here for ticket info