On the occasion of the closing of Leszek Oprządek's first solo exhibition 'Collections and Connections' ' at the MOLSKI gallery, an extraordinary conversation took place, conducted with the artist by the curator of the project, PhD Agnieszka Tes.

We had the pleasure of hearing about the origins of Oprządek's work, his numerous sources of inspiration, his relationships with authorities and his personal connection to art and nature.

Nature and geometry

In this case, the starting point of the creative process is not an apriori idea born on an intellectual level, but often a seemingly insignificant impulse coming from the outside world: an image, a stone, a piece of found wood, a glimpse of an accidental arrangement of forms. Asked to speak on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition Collections and Connections at Molski Gallery, the sculptor emphasised that his art is not created with a sense of detachment from the whole but, on the contrary, immanently grows out of a relationship to nature and contact with it, out of a reading of the world as a kind of great, unchanging work in which we all participate. It is not surprising, then, that Oprządek chooses materials directly from nature and prefers techniques based on its components. In the wooden works, for example, the artistic intervention is directly inspired by the shapes given by nature and enters into a symbiosis with them, in no small measure preserving the legibility of the original appearance. Works shown in Poznań such as the Parthenonas, the Gate and the Passage can be cited in this context. However, even when it comes to more decisive sculptural processing and finishing of individual objects by tanning the wood, giving them a noble shade of black, the artist is far from academic smoothing of the surface, preferring "hard" carving of archaic or even primitive origin. And here let us recall sculptures such as Night, Reaktor, Charge, Cone or Grafting. Another example of the use of the richness of nature are the 'reliefs' presented in the exhibition made of rhythmically arranged beech nut shells, thrown by the sea and found by the artist on a Greek beach (Collection One, Collection Two). 

PhD Agnieszka Tes