Sławomir Elsner. Precision and Chance

Light phenomena are at the centre of several series of coloured-pencil drawings that were produced between 2003 and 2010 based on his own or other people’s photographs, individual examples of which can be seen in the exhibition in Wiesbaden. The light spectacles depicted stem from catastrophes like the nineteen-part series “Landschaft” [Landscape] (2003) and the twelve-part sequel created in 2004–2005 “Feuerwerk und Luftabwehr” [Fireworks and Air Defence], which were drawn based on pictures of New Year’s Eve fireworks and war photographs from Kosovo and Iraq. The latter, alternately and in medium-sized format, show the light and colour effects of peaceful pyrotechnics and of acts of war, which can hardly be differentiated from one another. In 2005–2007, Elsner conveyed the light phenoma of atomic explosions from press photos to the medium of coloured-pencil drawing in seventeen pieces under the series title “Unsere Sonnen” [Our Suns]. Similar to the photographs, the areas that are radiated by glistening light remain white, as the work “270 Kilotons” in the exhibition demonstrates. The image of a car burning in a dark night in Warsaw is part of a series produced in 2009 and entitled “Paris, Berlin, Warszawa” (all Fig. 11  ). With succinct titles, which are open to all possible interpretations, Elsner works here with an aesthetic of horror, the motif of which recalls Andy Warhol’s series “Death and Disaster” (1962–1965) and especially its screen prints “Atomic Bomb” and “Car Crash” which appeared in many variations and were also based on press photos.

But with his works dealing with the terror attacks on the New York World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, which in our collective memory is the most deeply rooted catastrophe of the past decades, Elsner created a greater distance than just with the title. Instead of the familiar press images of the Twin Towers whilst they burned and ultimately collapsed, in his large-format series in coloured pencil “Windows on the World”, which was produced in 2008 to 2010, he referred back to his own photographs that he had taken a few months before the attack. In the eleven-part series, from which four pieces can be seen in Wiesbaden (Fig. 12–15  ), the originals he used were photos that he had taken himself in 2001 from the windows of the club of the same name Windows on the World on the 107th floor of the building, which looks out over New York in all directions, and in the inside of the restaurant bar. Here, too, the overall impression is conveyed by the light effects and the fuzziness and colour distortions resulting from images taken at night.

Whilst Warhol in the sixties was focusing on popularising image media and the sensation mongering that came with it and on creating new iconic visual worlds from this motif, today the narrative threads and headlines of powerful images are analysed in terms of their relationship to the different levels of the collective memory. In the current excessive world of media and information, image icons are now more likely to be a trigger for memories and emotions which are then joined by more or less interchangeable stories, analyses and sub-texts in print media and on the Internet. Elsner scrutinises and analyses such image icons, press images and private photographs using artistic means by conveying their composition, colourfulness and emotional content in minute detail over many weeks of intense concentration using heavy shading comprising precise lines created by new coloured pencils and in a large format.