BWA Contemporary Art Gallery in Katowice

“The fool circulates, moves, witters on about anything, laughs his head off, drinks himself blind, walks all night in the streets, dozes for an hour or two, then after a quick wash he starts again to play, messing, fooling and clowning around; he celebrates meetings with his many reliable friends, telling jokes every minute, presenting a farce every quarter of an hour, theorising on the side, never claiming or lacking anything, then again he drinks and seems to take nothing seriously, except for his very lack of seriousness. He is in turn ironical, delighted, enthusiastic, bad tempered or genial, shocking or delicate, notably when throwing himself into a tango or paso doble. He is precise or sluggish, attentive, miserable, trivial, elegant, extravagant, continually making a joke out of everything, and being stubborn to a certain extent.
His works, we clearly feel, are only a  series of actions. Made freely, as if he hadn’t taken anything for himself; hence his praise of failure and defeat. For example, painting a  brick wall with his own excrement, he systematically controls his diet in order to get a desired colour or even shade. Filming the largest number possible of human faces is an absurd and, by definition, infinite task. Showing as many as possible attempts at smiling on his face at every age. Making a crowd of null sculptures, for which he assembles non uniform elements that together are highly improbable, or null architecture, in which, for him, the less expressive the building is, the better. Piling up pictures, where we can see only the backs of their frames (these are his posters). Cutting up pieces of furniture and assembling their fragments in a way that assures their collapse. Hanging especially tilted pictures, seemingly selected in a more or less accidental way in order to evoke an impression of rubble his Fallen looks). Including clouds of smoke in his sculptural installations and treating them as a sculptural element. Painting a zebra in the street, zigzagged and fissured in the middle, where two unclear human figures clash, painted in a neo-mural style. Writing uncanny songs, purposefully composed in an impeccable rhythm and interpreted in the punk style, and foolish, idiotic and full of nonsense (a banana isn’t a pineapple), but with these, organising whole poor music-halls. Claiming that everything can be put on wheels and thus exhibited. Proposing special places of honour during his exhibitions, and asking colleagues to hang their pictures in them. Crossing trees at variance with nature, for example a spruce crossed with a palm tree, conceiving hybrid pieces of furniture such as a  partly Louis XV, partly Bauhaus chair, extending this principle of hybrid construction to all sculptures and paintings (genetic or syncretic art), all of which results in a kind of general upset of the natural and cultural forms to which we are accustomed. Composing parts of different faces together; in this way some particularly improper mixtures are attained, for example cross-portraits of Freud-Hitler or Proust-Kafka, or the clashing of a black mask with a white face, which was also a  favourite type of composition for Man Ray. Inventing titles of books to be written on a similar principle, based on the word reversal of existing titles (Decomposition of Outline, Young Girls in the Shadow of Flowers), or as a result of  the syncretisation of two titles of existing novels (In Search for the End of the Night, Travel to Lost Time)…”

Guy Scarpetta “A fool” (fragment)