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I have talked about Michał Hrisulidis’ artistic output a few times before. This output is explicit, characteristic, original and recognizable. It is impossible to confound it with another one and to attribute it to someone else.
Michał Hrisulidis/ Complex soul / 14.12.2018 - 19.01.2019
Anna Poznańska about MH
Is life a sequence of coincidences or are we sentenced to what is unavoidable?
Take an elevator and go to the top of an eight-storey building. Then, go up the narrow stairs. A tight, long corridor under the roof of the skyscraper. Mysterious silence. The westering sun is strongly reflecting its beams in windows of lofts. The view brings reflexive thoughts. Residents of the house do not look that high. Now I understand why artists organize their workshops in this Wrocław district of high blocks of flats so willingly.
The interior surprises with homely atmosphere. The space is divided like in an apartment; just behind the entrance there is a kitchen combined with a small living room, further, behind the corridor decorated with posters and graphics, there is a study. On the walls there are many Greek decorations and pictures of the closest ones; a father, son, daughter. Nice similarity. His father was Greek, grandfather came from Pontus. The history of Pontic Greeks is present in his life, he does not remember now how long ago he appointed it its honorary place. On the wall in the small living room there is a picture with cousins, with whom he shares a name and surname. It is a tradition in the father’s family to give the oldest son the name of the grandfather and the daughter – the name of the grandmother. Michał’s father had several brothers and each of them gave his first-born son the name of his father. Therefore, there are four Michał Hrisulidises.
Before he went to school, his father – a bookbinding master working at Polkarton, a disabled workers cooperative in Wrocław – read him Iliad, Odyssey, Aesop’s fables, he told him stories about their family in Greece, about a dramatic history of the family from Pontus. In primary school he sent Michał to obligatory lessons of Greek.
- A Greek! – boys used to call him when they wanted to tease him.
His father’s stories about the wonderful Hellas did not cure the distress then. He wanted to be the same like other kids a lot. There were strict rules in the backyard. One ought to work for his or her position and it was not easy for him. He early started to ask himself a question – who am I? What would it have been like if he had not lived here, but in his father’s homeland? He went to his father’s country no sooner than in 1981, when he was eighteen years old. When he got to his family house in Nea Zoan (Νεα Ζωη), probably all his relatives gathered, went out of their house in order to greet him. Uncles, aunts, male and female cousins… He was surprised with such a big family.
He stood in front of them with a backpack.
- It is Costas’ son – said uncle Apostolos.
He felt then that he was one of them. He cherished the memory of this greeting; kindness, joy, dance, tears and the smell of delicious dishes. Since then, Greece has become his added value, not a flaw, as boys from the backyard wanted. He was later telling them stories about Hellas. He indulged in Greek philosophers, literature and history. A dramatic story of Greeks from Pontus was the drama of his closest ones. And Pontic Greeks were proud, industrious and educated.
A question – whether life is a sequence of coincidences? – was coming back to him like mantra. He was wondering what would have happened if he had not lived in Wrocław, in the strangest, the most picturesque district? Interesting not because of the landscapes, but because of the accumulation of strange places and people. Every other passer-by was suitable for a portrait, every corner was like from an old picture. Due to these “images from life” he started to draw. The discovered skill soon turned out to be useful also in the backyard, because when it became known that he can copy Jimmy Hendrix’s portrait, he was highly respected even among colleagues of his 9 years older brother.
He was also thinking for example about what would have happened if he had not lived in front of Tęcza cinema in Wrocław? Whether in that case he would have seen almost every movie that had come out? He came back from the cinema and started drawing. Yes, living near the cinema was important. He reproduced scenes of fighting, portraits of characters, horses. He liked drawing horses very much. Other animals were portrayed nicely by his mother. Definitely, he inherited the artistic talent from her.
His parents were the children of war, their life was not easy. His father – an emigrant from Greece, mother – a Pole, from near Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski. She went to Wrocław just after the war and, as she claimed, she found the whole world here. She did not maintain too good relations with her family from Świętokrzyskie. Michał, interested in his roots, went there a few times after her death; he found the only living aunt, he found an old family home, he renewed his grandparents’ grave.
The first coincidence – painting
He graduated the high school of fine arts feeling that he can a lot and that drawing and painting are quite easy for him, however the most difficult thing is to find your own language of expression. Therefore, he came to a conclusion that he has to work out his own style of artistic creation. A fate had a surprise for him and just after the graduation he ended up in Kalambur theatre. A high school teacher recommended him for a decorator’s position. He was to paint posters and leaflets. Meanwhile, the theatre’s team was working on the contemporary Greek play and it turned out that no one from the crew had ever been to Greece. Michał became very useful; he dropped hints about how a Greek restaurant looks like, what are Greek interiors like, what props to use. He later looked for them in houses of his friends and acquaintances. However, the adventure in the theatre did not mean much to him then; painting was after all the goal that he had set for himself.
When he finally received a student record book of The State School of Fine Arts (today the Academy of Fine Arts), Michał Hrisulidis, a student, devoted himself to exploring secrets of paintings and graphics, being aware of the fact that he would have to work hard to achieve the goal that he had set for himself already in high school. On principle, he moved away from Formalism. There was a lot of teasing in it but, after all, figurative painting still enraptured him with its craft and it was a starting point in his aesthetic searching. Formally he was closer to Surrealism than to Abstraction.
He was looking for inspiration in philosophy and literature, he asked questions about the meaning and the shape of human life. In Hrisulidis’ early paintings, dense from meanings, strongly saturated with colors, elements of figurative painting dominated. He combined impressions from Hellas with Polish reality, touching what seemed to be close, resulting from the roots. These were works rich in cultural references. Both paintings and drawings had serious, existential character, searching for cultural archetypes was something that connected them, as if the author wanted to touch the mystery of existence. He successfully displayed his works in Polish galleries, and soon also abroad.
The second coincidence – movie
One day, in 1991, director Jan Jakub Kolski came to his exhibition in Na Jatkach art gallery. He was intrigued by the paintings, he was gazing at them, asked about the author.
- Wouldn’t you like to design a set for a movie? – he asked during the first conversation.
- No, I have different plans – answered Michał, even though he perceived the movie maker’s question to be a compliment.
He was not attracted by the work of a set designer, but from that moment he became an attentive observer of Kolski’s works. The poetics of his movies in a strange way harmonized with Michał’s thinking about art. Today, when movie and theatre set design definitely dominated his artistic output, Michał Hrisulidis likes to emphasize that he owes his interest in set design to Kolski. Engrossed in painting and drawing, he would not have got interested in set design if he had not met the director, who charmed Michał with his personality, “infected” him with the passion for movies. Is life a sequence of coincidences…?
Kolski commissioned various elements of a set design to Cudowne Miejsce (Wonderful Place) movie from Michał. It was supposed to be Kolski’s most artistic movie. Therefore, Michał created for the needs of the set design over twenty sculptures made in wood and in wood combined with other materials, he painted images stylized for folk paintings, perfect ones, without a trace of falsity. All this was to create the wonderfulness of the scenery. Sculptures were to fit into the oneiric, rural reality. The works matched the director’s ideas so well that he brought actors preparing their parts to the workshop to make it easier for them to find the atmosphere of reality which they would create.
Looking at selected shots from the movie, it is not possible to resist the magical beauty of pagan holidays or sculptures-curiosities, which sank into the nature or which even unexpectedly grew out of it, stopped the time and created magical reality, the world like from a dream. Kolski’s movies enrapture with poetics, atmosphere, magic conjured from realism. Hrisulidis’ sculptures perfectly co-created this oneiric, fairytale-like reality. It should not surprise, hence Kolski asked Hrisulidis to cooperate with him after having seen his paintings. Works of both these authors, surely so different, were linked by some common denominator. It consisted in the world entrenched in folk culture, what was similar was searching for archetypes in paintings full of colors, rich in meanings. In 1994, the jury of the 19th Film Festival awarded Cudowne Miejsce a prize for the artistic character of the movie. Michał Hrisulidis received the first movie award in his life, the prize for sculptures. Characters which he created were an important part of the artistic value of the movie.
For a visual artist, making a set design for a movie is quite an unfulfilling form of artistic utterance. A painter, a drawer themselves create their own reality, a set designer in turn fulfills the director’s vision, is a co-creator of the work. And, above all, there are many co-creators. In a huge production machine managed by the director everyone contribute their aesthetic sensitivity and shape the work according to the main idea; an actor, a camera operator, a costume designer, a make-up artist… The viewer’s attention also does not focus on a set design, the dramaturgy of action, actor’s playing are more important. But still… The meeting of these two artists caused that in Michał Hrisulidis’ work painting started to give way to movies.
After this realization, other offers of set designing for the painter appeared. Meanwhile, his spatial paintings, the compositions which could be placed between art installations and set designs, were the first result of the work on a movie set. The space was not limited to a canvas. The arrangement of space, the light became an important component for the artist. Paintings presented at that time were like actors in the stage space. The artist combined the work of a set designer with painting. Arts started to permeate each other.
At the time when Hrisulidis created set designs for television theatres or musicals directed by Kolski (Piosenki polne i okoliczne <Songs from the Fields and Near-bys> or OjDADAna one-reeler to Grzegorz Ciechowski’s music) and soon also set designs for movies by other directors, he displayed his paintings in Wrocław, Jelenia Góra, Zielona Góra, Toruń, Lublin… Set design realizations entered a discourse with drawings and paintings.
In 1998 Kolski vested creating a set design for a movie Historia kina w Popielawach (History of Cinema in Popielawy) in Hrisulidis. As it later turned out, the movie became another masterpiece delighting with the artistry of images, well received, awarded many prizes. The action of the movie is set in two planes of time, a contemporary one – in the 1960’s and in a retrospective one – during the January Uprising. Flashbacks take the viewer to a fairytale-like, wonderful world. A set design resembles images known from the earlier movies by this director: cottages, far picturesque landscapes, figures which at one moment seem to be sculptures and in the other become marvelous gifts of nature. Hrisulidis feels well in this reality. He again sculpts, paints, creates decorations on a cart, constructions from the wonderful world, because after all the cinema in Popielawy makes wonders… Critics emphasize that the atmosphere of the space in which the characters from the movie exist to a great extent contributes to its magical realism.
Creating a set design for another movie by Jan Jakub Kolski, Daleko od okna (Keep Away from the Window), was a significant experience. This touching, well-told by the director story is distinct from his other works. Also the set designer created a space completely different from the previous ones. The movie is set during The Second World War. Dramatic events take place in a claustrophobic apartment, creating the atmosphere of danger and fear. There is also a small painter’s workshop, intriguing with its atmosphere. A lot of details, every of which is a strong symbol, so significant that the jury of the 25th Film Festival in 2000 awarded Michał Hrisulidis a prize for the set design.
In the following years, the artist created several dozens of set designs for movies, television theatre performances, TV series. He made movies among others with Radosław Piwowarski, Filip Bajon, Małgorzata Kopernik, Filip Zylber, Maciej Ziębiński. He displayed drawings and paintings in art galleries in Łódź, Dresden, Berlin, Brussels, Cracow, Warsaw, Toronto and in many other places. He drew on two kinds of art, used different means of expression, he created artistic reality in a distinct way.
The third coincidence – theatre
In 2010 theatre called for him. Straight from the movie set he entered the stage of the Capitol Musical Theatre in Wrocław. It was an unusual coincidence, because he met then his artistic soul mate – an actor and director Cezary Studniak. They started working together from Hair musical, then there were Mury Hebronu (The Walls of Hebron), Kopciuch, Imperium (The Empire), Niekoniecznie jest źle (It is not Necessarily Bad), Kocham cię. Ja ciebie też nie (I Love You, I don’t Love You Either), Porno (Porn), Kochanie, zabiłam nasze koty (Honey, I Killed Our Cats), Dziecię Starego Miasta (The Child of the Old Town) and many other plays. Meeting Cezary Studniak caused that theatre set design became for Hrisulidis another Discovery of possibilities for artistic realizations.
In theatre, there are different rules for creating worlds. Theatre loves convention. The space needs to be exceptionally functional, it sometimes combines what cannot be combined in nature. Details also mean something in a different way and, prepared with a movie-like precision, they often assist the actor rather than the expression of the whole work. One of the more important features of Hrisulidis’ language in various forms of artistic realization is surely the love for details marked with his “handwriting”; details, which in theatre are loved by actors and directors, in a movie they frequently take the co-creators and viewers to the space of ambiguities and universalism.
A director - set designer tandem created by Hrisulidis and Studniak liked experimenting, sometimes against canonical patterns. This claim is exemplified by moving the action of Hair from the Central Park in New York to the artist’s workshop-loft. Hrisulidis’ theatre set designs are characterized by certain movie-like character, even though the artist in theatre willingly uses convention, symbolism, all this what the theatre offers. It is interesting that the “exercises” in set design conventions will soon pay off in other artistic genres. The artists created together several theatre performances, each of which took the viewer to a reality which enriched the author’s world created by the director and set designer, each encouraged to involve in other common actions.
It is thirty years now since Michał Hrisulidis for the first time showed his artistic works in the No Name art gallery in Wrocław, today the City Gallery. The acclaimed artist, winner of many prizes, today he made a stop on his way, a journey full of “coincidences – no-coincidences”, interesting experiences, shaping the language of his artistic expression.
He covered a huge distance. It is possible to go single-mindedly, fulfilling one’s goal, it is also possible to use suggestions coming to us unexpectedly, achieving results not planned earlier. Hrisulidis takes the advantage of the coincidences which the life brings. Flashbacks cause that we understand the meaning of actions more, we order works, at the same time making a synthesis of meanings spread across time and space. Then, it turns out that what seemed to be distant and diversified creates a harmonious whole.
MICHAŁ HRISULIDIS’FOOTNOTES TO A MAN
Wojciech Śmigielski about MH
Poet, critic and translator
Cezary Srudniak about working with MH
Director, actor, screenwriter, vocalist and musician
