Stefan Chazbijewicz

Filmmaker, poet and visual artist Stefan Chazbijewicz seeks to establish a mystic space in his artwork, a domain of salvaged reality, or, as he puts it, a semiotic representation of what we are after salvation. Here we present three of Chazbijewicz ’ recent visual artworks together with a text that introduces his approach. The three images, “apres - nous,” “Greece, Athens,” and “The Question of Acropolis” are all recent works, employing a variety of techniques and references to collectively suggest a path, a series of perspectives

Stefan Chazbijewicz approaches the image as a mystic space, seeking to establish a contemporary iconography by drawing on Andrei Tarkovsky's films, the photography of Eva Rubenstein, and the paintings of Jerzy Nowosielski. Taking his cue from the way Tarkovsky used the shot as a window to a supernatural, higher reality, Chazbijewicz reaches for the Platonic first ideas, a domain in which primary patterns and structures emerge.
Tarkovsky's images resembled Byzantic culture and art, as well as the Persian miniature, in the way they emphasised a firmly semantic representation of a higher reality. His cinematography drew heavily on the Russian theologian Pavel Florensky, whose description of the philosophy and craft of medieval Russian iconographer Andrei Rublev prepared the ground for a meeting with God as an iconostasis, a hierarchy of pictures. This is a theology -or, more precisely, a soteriology -that seeks to demarcate an area of salvaged reality. To Chazbijewicz such an approach to the visual domain resonances strongly with the work of Polish painter Jerzy Nowosielski, who claimed to be painting "the reality of salvation." Chazbijewicz attempts to show what we are after salvation.
When Chazbijewicz enters into dialogue with action painting, a tradition which Chazbijewicz sees as primarily a painting of capture, or "an aesthetic of the finger and the hand," he seeks a way to capture the body and its mood. Drawing on the practices of Buddhism and calligraphy Chazbijewicz sees action painting as what he calls the calligraphy of God, an important and spontaneous act where the artist serves as the energetic medium for forces and domains beyond his immediate being.
Quoting Goethe's reminder that it is in limitations that the master reveals himself Chazbijewicz declares his visual art to take a minimalist approach, with the explicit purpose of proximating the essence of Being.
"I hope I can now see deeper and wider, and that I am able to express such an essence wiser," Chazbijewicz says.
In this issue of Inscriptions we present three images from Chazbijewicz' recent visual production. . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
In "apres-nous" the salvaged subject reappears as an iconic expression from an intuitive perspective, suggesting another dimension. "In J.L. Borges' rewriting of Swedenborg a man and woman loving each other becomes one angel after death." "apres-nous": oil, chalk and coal on canvas; August, 2018.
"Greece, Athens" is an action painting, pencilled on ecological paper, and embellished with tech instruments.
"The Question of Acropolis" is a personal comment on the selfie genre of photography. It shows what Chazbijewicz refers to as "the way as a minimalist expression." An aesthetic programme in miniature the photograph was taken inside the Acropolis Museum in Greece.
"The Question of Acropolis": photography and postprocessing; November 2018.

Authors' contributions
The text for this article was written by Torgeir Fjeld after an interview with Stefan Chazbijewicz in Gdańsk, Poland, on December 18, 2018. The images are (c) Stefan Chazbijewicz.