Corner passe-par-tout

What is there between, say, light and shadow, between the image and the frame? The work of Jan Berdyszak - an artist analysing space and the relations occurring between it and the objects placed in it - tries to answer these questions. The painter began with deconstruction - initially the support succumbed to him, which from rectangular or square became circular and rounded, rather unsuitable for placing in traditional frames. Around 1965 the first structural painting with an opening arose, where the line of the cut-out does not coincide with the outer perimeter of the work. The artist then dealt with what escapes most people - the „light” existing between the work and its frame, that is, the passe-partout, or as the artist preferred, pass-par-tout - a passage towards the whole. Raising the problem of space, its filling or complementing, of that which limits or frees it, was the leading theme in Jan Berdyszak's work. This admittedly simplified characterisation does not take into account the whole spectrum of the artist's interests, and the spatial compositions most often presented at auctions do not exhaust all the forms he used to study space, which also included installations, sculpture, graphic art, photography and the artist's book. An opportunity to become acquainted with a cross-section of Jan Berdyszak's work were the exhibitions organised at the turn of 2006 and 2007 in Poznań galleries (and the Wozownia gallery in Toruń), summarising almost 50 years of the artist's creative work. PROVENANCE: - private collection, Poland; - the collection of Waldemar Andzelm, Lublin. EXHIBITED: - Berdyszak, Gierowski, Kałucki, Kamoji, group exhibition, Museum of the City of Łódź, 22.10.2010 - 29.01.2011. REPRODUCED: - Berdyszak, Gierowski, Kałucki, Kamoji, Anzelm Gallery, Lublin 2010, pp. 14-15, - Jan Berdyszak. Prace 1960 - 2006, [ed.] Marta Smolińska-Byczuk, Wojciech Makowiecki, Mirosław Pawłowski, Poznań 2006, p. 181.