Found object

Leszek Knaflewski (1960-2014) began his artistic career in the 1980s. Initially, he was associated with the Poznań-based art group Koło Klipsa (1983-1990) – one of the most interesting artistic formations operating in the difficult, impoverished reality of late communist period. At the time, the artist developed his own means of expression and a personal vocabulary of motifs that have been present in his work ever since. Chief among them was the use of natural materials such as roots, tree branches and bark, pieces of soil and hair, as well as the image of a root topped with a crucifix. The crucifix root appears in Knaflewski's early drawings, including in monumental proportions in his objects, as well as in microscale in the works of the Raincarnation series – two of which, dating back to 2001, were purchased for the contemporary art collection of the National Museum in Szczecin in 2012. Raincarnation is a series of works characteristic of Knaflewski's artistic projects realized since the 1990s, when the artist created works made up of hundreds of dried roots and pieces of soil. The hair-covered roots lie on a white interlining in steel-framed boxes, shielded by sheets of transparent plexiglass. Some of these tiny, delicate and once living organisms are shaped into a crucifix root, which is unknown to nature. The root as a sign of the beginning of existence and the crucifix – which in Western culture symbolises its end – are inextricably combined into a poignant metaphor of the cycle of life.

Magdalena Lewoc