Darek Pala: Essays
-
Out of the box
Humans are born free and unconstrained. Then, due to bans and superstitions, shaped by parents and professors we build a wall around ourselves. Who closes us in the box of restrictions - others or ourselves?
-
The Goldfish and The Glass Ball
Aquaria are excellent dream containers. Protected by a wall of glass or perspex, various biotopes can drift immersed in the oily element: sandy lagoon banks strewn with colourful shells, coral reefs, the meanders of the Ucayali – worlds enclosed in glass, a safe medium for our dreams.
-
To build form through colour
Sparkles of light glittered in the crystal panes; in coral groves, goldfish and jellyfish swam, touching each other with their mouths, fins, slippery tails; crabs and turtles stared with huge eyes; emerald fields of seaweeds were iridescent with the many-coloured starfish and urchins who had their home among them, bands of yellow sponges hung from steep rocks...
-
Vase Number 1
Vases are closest to the definition of a painting according to the Polish Colourists. However, Pala saturates them with emotions which do not normally go with the art of flower arrangement. His vases are rudimentary, archaic, brutal. They bear witness both to the struggle with material, so precious to Colourists, and to the painters unfailing knack for finding a colouristic punchline.
-
Darek Pala. Paintings
Darek Pala. Paintings combines traits of an art-critical work with threads of an emotionally imbued story of the life and creative work of this most en-vogue painter of the Warsaw of 1990s, whose art serves as the best evidence of the style and taste of the Polish age of ‘emerging capitalism’.
-
Beauty Forced Itself In
First of all – color. For Darek Pala, this is a priority, a starting point in his thinking about a painting and his painting method. The form and style of his works keep changing – shifting from comical scenes to the simplicity of singular motifs, from a multiplicity of ornaments to synthesis, from elaborate fiction to focus, even to the contemplation of still nature. One thing remains constant: the decisive of role of color.
