Radek Kirchhoff: Why do You deal with art.?
Eryk Giermak: Firstly, it’s meeting with other people. Secondly, it’s creating and transferring universal values – understood at any latitude. Thirdly, it’s building on the foundations of a culture you first have to understand.
I use this triad as guidance, preserving in artistic form what is important for me and my recipient. I’m not in a race with the Creator, nature or any other artists. For myself and my audience I try to stop time for this one and only moment to escape passing. In my projects I want to maintain a message that moves, inspires and helps in mutual understanding.
What is your recipe for an interesting work of art?
Art is telling a realistic story.
Before realizing each of my projects I work on a “psychological sketch”, I learn the context and analyse what I find. I pick the technique, materials and way of exposition. Next, I try to establish my version of the “piece” – without a good story everything else is meaningless. Staging something, simply making the artifact is not art. Art is influencing the audience, engaging its imagination. I uncover as much as is needed. The less you see the more mysterious it gets, the more you want to think about it. I lead myself with a certain fancy and taste avoiding ugliness. Together with my audience I aim at uncovering the phenomenon of beauty.
Does that mean that you create only in opposition to ugliness?
I don’t brand anything or anyone as beautiful or ugly. However, when I create, I reserve the right to use the proper means of expression. By “proper” I mean one that will best portrait emotions, character, mood, atmosphere, rank – anything that is worth preserving, anything that’s worth fighting with the passing of time. Artistically doesn’t always mean pretty, but certainly it means in an interesting way. Always in accordance with my own aesthetical standard.
Is your work based on a certain genre or style?
I don’t think I fit in with today’s mainstream. It’s hard for me to come to terms with the vision of reality prepared by the academics for future generations as a trademark of our times. That’s why I don’t imitate reality, I rather portrait what I think important in a human being, an object, in an arrangement of objects. I take interest in deepening values that are usually hidden or unnoticed. My role in the creative process is uncovering before the audience what is hidden under a tarnish of shallow and unimportant layers of everyday life. I love the unusual.