Marek Radke

Images becoming objects while remaining images; shades of colour lining up to form a complex, multi-part sequence of tones; geometric elements succeeding in breaking even the severity of structural predictability and being transformed into a playful show of changing sensual effects: these are just some of the direct visual experiences that Marek Radke’s art is able to communicate. They are the result of consistency and creativity, which is anchored in the great tradition of Constructivism. With Strzemiński and Stażewski – to name just two – the movement is represented by key figures in Polish art and, despite all the prophecies of doom, remains alive and well today. In turn, Radke succeeds in articulating his own arsenal of forms in his artworks, with an individual image language that has grown over the years.

To illustrate this point and make it comprehensible, a brief reminder of Radke’s first years as a painter in Poland during the early 1980s is in order. Why? From Malevich before his black square to Mondrian before the red, black and yellow linear squares against a white background, or Kandinsky before the first abstract composition following his depiction of figures from Russian fairytales, the path of development has always led away from a representationalist style towards a treatment of colour and form that is emptied of any dependence on reality and based on the absolute freedom of area and space. The same is also true of Marek Radke.

There was, and still is, talk of the new autonomy of image elements, whatever it was that I was doing, but of course, that is only partly true. The will of the artist remains the dominant factor; it is the decisive institution which invents a new image structure and formulates its own rules. These can have their roots in mysticism, as with Malevich; in a neo-platonic mindset, as with Mondrian; or in the spiritual, as with Kandinsky – or in a sensitive yet specific narrative art, from which Marek Radke once emerged.

The free, informal abstraction and the strictly bound Constructivism develop from different roots, each retaining its own characteristics without having settled as such. Then there is the difference in creation between the genesis that has developed and the practical availability of finished forms and methods, such as in the field of crafts and design. Radke’s early years are surely a case in point here. His works from that time show an artist who has learned his traditional craft and who is already consciously playful in his abstractive handling of the content – a deliberate paradox. These images are, after all, a politically critical, satirical reckoning with the times and were, incidentally, certainly not without risk. He was accused by the authorities of betraying his country. It was with a sense of pride when the same paintings were again shown in Gdańsk 20 years later.

If one considers his art in terms of the standards of composition – visual weighting, the rules of the golden ratio, the anchoring of the elements in the space, the correspondence between the colours, the warm, the cool, the conscious dissonances or harmonies – then his first Constructive works are no different from their figural forerunners. However, what they do not have is a nameable materiality. From now on, preference is given to a minimalist form canon. The focus is on lines, rectangles and circles. Without the support of an imposed meaning, they are left to fend for themselves, form the surface and become the image, but only because they are supported by a stable structure.

It is this first turning point in Radke’s art, which he masters, indeed in a credible manner through his personal development, which finds its own expression despite the erratic block in outstanding Constructive painting within the modernist art movement of the last century. In this context, I always think of the wonderful Klee painting, “Hauptweg und Nebenwege” (Main Path and Byways). In it, the differentiation of the nuances becomes a feast of many possibilities, a topography of the creative process per se, as it can also be for all Constructive art.

At a very early stage, Marek Radke, in a new burst of development, decided to push the enclosing lines of the geometric figures outwards, as it were, and to establish them as boundaries of areas occupied by monochrome colour, in other words, to turn them into a red circle, an orange rectangle or a blue square. Form and colour become a unit while at the same time vying with each other for interpretive authority in the image. This tension surrounding the two sole image sizes is used by Radke to create highly specific flat composition, which he installs as an intellectual space for play for the eye.

He discovers a plurality of refined moves consisting of colour settings and formal challenges, and subsequently adds a third element. He renders visible the signs of development, the trace of the brush and the hands. He overturns the stringency of the form through the gesture of the structure, or pits one against the other, attaining a sum total with changing algebraic signs. Intellect meets emotion; geometry meets rhythm; statics and dynamics are fruitfully balanced. This is also why it is possible to speak of minimalist means in connection with Radke’s work, but never of Minimal Art, even if his spatial images in serial rows and with the “modules” can be seen as coming close to digitally generated symbols. The homo ludens experiments, and the boundaries between appearance and reality become fluid.

Quite logically, as his work progressed, Radke then called the flat surface as the ultimate image plane into question. Initially, he scoops it out, in circular or rectangular form, elevates spatial dimensions with colour strips, and attains disconcerting depth effects. He plays with the trompe-l’oeuil effect, with tricking the eye, and in a highly effective manner, allows the body to define the relationship between volume and space on and in the surface. As his work develops further, the Constructive elements initially become entirely emancipated from the image surface, then from the wall surface, in order to be perceived as autonomous colour objects. These colour constructs, these colours that are collated and embodied in the material, make it possible to experience space anew; they establish themselves alongside the observer as three-dimensional partners in dialogue and provoke communication under altered conditions. Even more: the elements invite the observer to participate directly in the composition. And if this is not enough, in his latest works, the now four elementary levels of Radke’s art, namely colour, form, object and space, interact with a further component: light. Naturally, it is always the case that objects only become visible when reflected in light. On the one hand, the use of black light on phosphorescent colours brings a new awareness of this phenomenon, which is otherwise taken for granted, while on the other, it generates a sense of mystery and astonishment from the laws of physics. The playful elements in the presentation of the colour objects is transformed into magic, while at the same time, the intensified experience of the light effects also creates further creative possibilities, which Radke uses with artistic verve.

Again, he makes spaces his own, turns them into colourful cabinets of wonders through threads and nets of light, and through the use of mirrored depths. He creates the impression that colours can fly. These most recent developments can often only be hinted at by means of a collection of individual objects in an exhibition space or through photographs of installations, since the spatial requirements cannot always be met.

However, they can be assigned to the treasure trove of visual experiences from which new image concepts mature in the artist’s mind. From these, exciting challenges emerge for the observer and a promise is kept, namely that art, as described by Rudolf Arnheim, is “one of the rewards that fall to us when we think by seeing”. And in fact it is always this – thinking and seeing – that is the purpose of art.

 

Gisela Burkamp, November 2020