By Tom McLean
The Ottawa School of Art Gallery is inviting Centretown residents to open all their senses to its latest exhibition, featuring the work of Polish artist Ryszard Litwiniuk.
Inside the exhibition room, signs reading “Please do not touch” are nowhere to be found. Patrons are encouraged to smell, touch and even move the solid art pieces on display to complete Litwiniuk’s expression of his work.
“I would certainly call it one of the highlights of this year’s exhibition run,” said Ottawa School of Art director Jeff Stellick.
Litwiniuk, who was born in Olsztyn, Poland in 1966, officially unveiled his unique works, collectively called metamorphoses — empty spaces, at a grand opening on April 1. The Republic of Poland’s ambassador to Canada was on hand with other curious onlookers to listen to Litwiniuk describe the philosophy behind his art.
Litwiniuk said all his sculptures begin with a base piece carved from organic wood into a geometric shape, such as a triangle, which he then assembles with other pieces to form an organic pattern.
The sculptures are held upright by solid metal poles or hung from the ceiling, and patrons are encouraged to experience them up-close and personal. The final products are static but suggest movement in the way they are shaped, some of them looking like strange creatures frozen in space. But Litwiniuk said his sculptures are incomplete without a human presence.
“Touch for me is the most important of the human senses — it is the beginning of familiarity,” said Litwiniuk. “The observer must feel the sculpture with all of their body and their senses. The visitor becomes a part of the sculpture and completes it through presence and physical intervention. My work cannot exist without people because without an audience there is no life.”
How far can one go in their physical experience of Litwiniuk’s work? His answer was simple:
“I make art for people, not monkeys.”
Litwiniuk said the trust he places in observers not to interpret “move and touch” to mean “damage and destroy” is part of his expression. He said it’s meant in part to demonstrate what he sees as a close relation between ethical and esthetic values.
Still, the school has decided against placing any of the sculptures, which are light enough to pick up, outside the building on George Street.
“With the busy market I could almost see a tour bus backing over it or something,” says Stellick.
At the exhibition’s opening, Ottawa residents who were looking at the sculptures seemed reluctant to touch them despite the author’s encouragement, some of them tentatively running a single finger over the wooden frames and then retreating.
“It’s just not something you’re used to doing at an exhibition,” said Anna Vickers, who lives on James Street in Centretown. “It kind of highlights what he’s saying I think — that we’re very accustomed to that physical separation when dealing with art.”
Litwiniuk, who for the past nine months has been living in Tilbury, Ont., has made other sculptures in his native Poland, which are typically displayed outdoors, and has seen his work displayed at about 10 galleries since 1992. He says a lot of European artists move to Canada for the same reason he did: “For the snow covering.”
The free exhibit will run until April 19 at the Ottawa School of Art Gallery, located at 35 George St.