Space with Raised Areas

The aim of the attempts at a visual presentation of statistical distributions is to make one aware of the role of chance, which is significant in the contemporary world. The subject would be the statistical manifestations of life in both the social and the psychological sphere. Put more simply - the throw of a die ceases to be merely an instrument by means of which something is achieved, and becomes itself the subject. - Ryszard Winiarski (in the catalogue for the exhibition at the International Press and Book Club in Warsaw, 1970) Ryszard Winiarski's theory of art was based on two principles - order and chance. Order is mathematical rules - numerical sequences. Chance is a random variable, which was most often the throw of a die or a coin. It was this that determined the first field in the carefully drawn grid, from which the artist began building a composition, often treated as an additional element of his activities rather than their aim. As a graduate not only of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts but also of the Polytechnic, in his theory of art he assumed combining it with science, the realisation of an objective work of art that would not be marked by emotions. This may also be the source of the choice of colour: black and white, as well as of the reference to the binary system or code. He often called the physical results of his work „attempts at a visual presentation of statistical distributions”. It seems that for Ryszard Winiarski the more important thing was the scientific, research approach to the systems, which over time were complicated by further colours or a third dimension. Through further complications of the „attempts at a visual presentation of statistical distributions” the artist began creating spatial objects. The most interesting of them were realised in the Netherlands. It is also worth noting the opinion of Bożena Kowalska, who points out that in Ryszard Winiarski's artistic attitude one can see not only the seeds of conceptual art but also the role of process. Today Ryszard Winiarski's work is juxtaposed with the op-art current, since the artist's spatial compositions in particular create a kind of illusion and deceive the observer's eye, and with the consistent artistic concept of Roman Opałka and his counted paintings from the cycle 1 - ∞, realised from 1965.