The glass bead game of Kasia K.

Fortune is an investment in the future.

“Szczęście jest inwestycją w przyszłość.”

Krystian Lupa[1]

In Neverland – Gobe, somewhere on the edge of a Gobelin wood, two jaunty fawns are looking out for Little Red Riding Hood. Oho! There she comes with a basket full of strange ideas because the wolf ... Oh, the wolf, tangled up in obscenely intertwined vines, flirts with an elf. No, nothing is going to come of that, dear wolf! You cannot have the set from the back on the sleeves any shorter and even if you could: this sleeve always belonged to the shepherdess so that you will certainly be too late for dinner with your grandmother. I try to describe a coat … the deep, green-shimmering red is as soft as silk. A juicy bunch of glassy grapes beckons at every turn with the scent of sun-warmed Imperia, of a dry Primitivo and in Tarantella rhythm. Can a lady’s handbag be described?

Kasia Kincel creates her works with a humour bordering on the absurd. Her trade mark is the harmonious coexistence of the many features of an object. In the sparkling earring, the clasp of a bag or in the sleeve of a coat, she catches the mood of precisely that moment that can never be recaptured. The artist transforms these fascinations into forms whose distinctiveness can be found in their three-dimensionality, without relating to fundamental life situations and without deconstructing the values identified. She majestically commands the excess in everything by transforming the apparent chaos into subtle, autonomous forms of existence of art that are carried by simple harmony and symbiotic peace, and in so doing she unites both naturalistic and surrealistic elements.

Coloured beads, glass beads, wooden animals, fabric remnants of unknown origin, along with magnificent naturally coloured tapestries, religious articles of any provenance, golden threads, lace ribbons and undefined parts of a large whole ... This vanity fair is essential to the artist as it promises transformation. The transformation of such stuff into a melodious assemblage is confirmed by the haptics, both in the creation process and in its reception.

Every detail that Kasia touches with her hands and with her heart contributes to seductively combining the visible world of the artist with the world of the metaphor; by contrast, when we touch these objects, we perceive their unique sensuality and their energy ... and are happy to be bewitched by them. Perhaps not everybody who enters the artist’s magical world will stay in it for evermore but even just a short stay there will ease tension and reveal the possibility of other states of consciousness. And it will ensure that you distance yourself from the uniform fashion round.

Kasia’s work, and the artist herself, remove themselves from all conventions. They cannot be aesthetically compartmentalised and not once are they pigeonholed. Perhaps we are dealing here with something that is akin to the artistic freedom of “combine painting” and “action painting”?

Mondrian considered the female element to be aesthetic, conservative and reserved, the male was kinetic, creative, expressive and progressive. So let us assume that the female principle is matter and the male is spirituality, then in Kasia Kincel’s works it can be said that the ephemeral layer of magic conceals an extremely well thought out, sophisticated form. And even if she defends the unique “world of her own”, she still makes a compromise with her own intentions.

A personal comment on the work of Kasia Kincel-Ossolinski, her credo as an artist:

The most important thing is that the circumstances are right to create as much as possible. In the past, she had given in with abandon to the need for people and the longing for love, and she fulfilled others’ expectations because she wanted to please everyone. She allowed herself to be carried along by chance, to put herself into extreme situations but still be an outsider … until it came to the point to choose between pleasure and happiness. She no longer has to do anything at any cost. The quieter her life, the more time she has for passion.

After she completed her degree at the Władysław Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts, she left her hometown of Łódź for Italy and lived in many places around the world. She has stayed longer in Berlin, but is it forever? She knows that you can create a bit of your own floor or your own wall anywhere. Especially the wall, because Kasia might return to painting one day? A dozen good pictures has ended her “blue phase”, which she began after she turned her back on her earlier occupation with photography.

Katarzyna Kincel-Ossolinski is an eminent, world renowned expert in the restoration and reconstruction of icons. But that should be dealt with separately because it takes us into a broad field: a field on a river into which, unlike Heraclitus’ conjecture, one steps a number of times and will – perhaps – step into several times more.

Magda Potorska, November 2020

[1] Krystian Lupa (1943) is one of Poland’s most renowned theatre directors. [Translator’s note]