In these images - unlike in almost all of Pavel Zak's work to date - the glue of the whole seems to be above all white; so far, his photographs have been kept in fleshy, dense, dark, almost gloomy tones.
The replacement of the so-called low key with high key is accompanied by the abandonment of the saturated grays of silver techniques in favor of the colors offered by the latest digital technologies. The visual content of these photos has also undergone a major metamorphosis, as Pawel has made another purification of it; which at first glance now directs one's thoughts into the realm of minimal art explorations. The result is a kind of very subtle, economical still life, and my thoughts wandered to Japan and its wonderful, centuries-old tradition of garden art - especially stone gardens. This track seems decidedly more interesting; because most likely these photographs in exhibition format will urge contemplation, which is the vestibule of meditation, whose importance and power lies in concentration.
At the same time, these minimized images of Paul remain (whether he wanted them to or not) very Christian in their simplistic symbolism. Leaving aside technical considerations about white, for centuries it has remained in our culture a symbol of purity, innocence, the absolute, beginning and end, holiness, etc. What fills much of these photographs appears to be a table covered with a white tablecloth. It's hard not to associate a similar motif with the Last Supper or Christmas Eve dinner. Although there are usually no dishes on the table, nevertheless some disturbing, unknown and incomprehensible mystery is taking place before our eyes. Here, above its surface, hovering against the laws of gravity, humbly and evenly like Zeppelins, are two balloons; the remnants of a rite held with an unknown intention. At other times, it is a barely perceptible part of a soap bubble just bursting, eloquently arranged in an Egyptian pyramid (or perhaps an Aztec temple?) of sugar cubes. At other times, the tablecloth is the deliberation of dried slices of bread, or a conference of wrinkled grapes from a wine strain probably unknown to the Bible, or a meeting of pancake-shaped stones. In a glass half-filled with water, a storm is currently brewing, the dice are flying like a grandmother's summer. For that, in the bowl, in which the little weary feet of the great prophet could be washed, boils and bubbles like a hellish cauldron. But that's not all. At moments one has the impression that this is not a table, not a Last Supper memorial with a stained tablecloth, but a deathbed after the last anointing, with an unnecessary shroud from which both body and spirit have evaporated, leaving no significant traces, no signs, no clues for those seeking the way. And what is that pillow doing there? What does it signify - pointing to the sky - the red-blooded crayon? Or the red thread on which a stone with a hole swings, like a soul on a swing, or entwining a table to transform it into something like an ironing board (of souls)? Elsewhere, three unburned (fallen) matches all the more beg for an evangelical interpretation; as does a white letter on an even whiter shroud, like a silent message to the blind....
It's probably no coincidence: there are photos in this series that break up the gentle monotony of the high key. In one of them, in the spotlight, the shroud is smoking. Could it be an allusion to the baptism by fire and resurrection? And finally, perhaps the hardest, strangest and perhaps the key photo. The same scenery in purple. The tablecloth, the shroud or the wide nuptial stole awaiting the arrival of the betrothed? The table or the deathbed? Or even the cradle of eternal sorrows? Whatever the case may be, purple symbolizes power - it is the color of pride, the opposite of the ruddy potatoes that reign supreme, with their solemnity and importance surpassed perhaps only by the last on the list, the beet, which just here would be too literal.
en set of photographs by Pawel Zak - maintained in a palette of colors often found in Finnish artists - is something completely new, but logically flowing from all his work to date. We are still in the world of imagination and fantasy, poor theater, in the realm of staged photography. Only that this time the world created by Paul is decidedly ZEN and poses questions of a different caliber. Elementary questions, at times dramatic, orphaned by global everyday life, offering thousands of ready answers except one: concerning the meaning of existence. What has always captivated me about his photographs is the distance with which he looks at himself and his world, and the profound awareness of the fact that, regardless of our will, it is always entangled with the external, cruel and unpredictable. How endearing it is that he is able to ironize with humility, both about himself and about reality, knowing that in the end it all works out for one thing anyway, because we are all an imperceptible but inalienable part of it. This creation is an attempt to resurrect, to restore metaphysical meaning to the non-pragmatic realm of feelings and emotions. For the Good God - even if he never existed - is the pinnacle of creative, abstract thinking in the entire history of the human race.
Paris, 11.03.2008
The article appeared in No. 26 of "Kwartalnik Fotografia" in 2008