Patrzec, plakaæ: o istocie oka
To look and to cry: the pupil of an eye. After Tomasz Struk’s death.

Summary/Abstract: Tomasz Struk visited me in Gdañsk in 1981. In 1995, we met again in Levallois-Perret. He had to remind me of our first meeting, because I didn’t remember it. He had good memory. In his work, he concentrated on things, which he remembered. He was afraid that images might disappear, when we only depended on stories told in words. He believed that we shouldn’t be the victims of words’ fragility. In 2000, I wrote a forward to his catalogue, which accompanied the exhibition entitled ‘The Geometry of Memory’. I wrote in that essay, that Tomasz based his work on subtle and original artistic forms. He revealed in forms what was hidden in memory. At the beginning of his artistic career, he often used such motifs as waves. He suggested that billions of waves appear and disappear every minute without trace. I think that he considered waves as symbols of fate. He believed that the reality was dominated by constant movement, and that there were no divisions between the present and the past. In the 1990’s, Tomasz discovered the original form of Polish hexagonal coffin portraits. His pictures of waves and leaves were framed in hexagonal frames. He didn’t make comments to history; he wanted to keep history alive. In 1994, he started his ‘White Series’ of pictures. He covered painting boards with several layers of paint, the last layer was white. He, then, removed parts of layers in order to show how they were formed. That method of revealing the elements, which were placed underneath different layers of paint referred to his idea of aesthetic contemplation. Throughout his artistic career, he concentrated on graphic techniques. In the 1970’s, he produced a series of silk screen prints entitled ‘Gesture Printing’. He combined painterly and graphic techniques. His installation built to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust referred to the symbol of ever-green trees. His art showed the sorrows of life. He believed that by ‘washing our eyes with tears, we could better see the reality’.

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