The 1990s. Personal computers are finding their way into homes, the internet is taking its first steps, and in Wrocław, Jacek Szleszyński is already experimenting with computer animation. In 1996, his work In Progress won the Grand Prix at Ars Digitalis in Berlin, a festival organised to mark the 300th anniversary of the Akademie der Künste. Video projected onto buildings, art spilling into urban space, moving images transforming city walls. Sound familiar? At Kinomural, it’s second nature. For Jacek, it was pioneering territory.
A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, Szleszyński has worked across painting, graphic design, animation and game development. His films have been presented at festivals in Scotland, Brazil, Germany, Italy and Poland. The tools have changed over the years. The curiosity hasn’t.
At Kinomural, he revisits his award-winning In Progress nearly three decades after its premiere. A work from 1996? Yes. Still striking? Absolutely.
In Progress takes one of the most recognisable paintings of the twentieth century as its starting point: Malevich’s Black Square. What the Russian painter locked into an extreme reduction of form, Szleszyński breaks apart: colours, rhythms and geometric shapes layer and synchronise, building a sequence of variations in image and sound simultaneously. The animation sits at a fascinating crossroads between the computer art of the early 1990s and the sequential imagery of avant-garde expressionist cinema from a century before.
