Paweł Susid
UNDERSTANDING THE WORDS, drawing conclusions

April 1 – May 6, 2017

Can one understand words? And draw any conclusions from it?

In his works, Paweł Susid repeats words, sentences, phrases, slogans referring to various ideologies and religions, quotes which made history, catchphrases drawn from common speech.

Stencil-painted text is not connected with more or less abstract forms, as in his previous works. The artist covers entire surfaces of his paintings with letters, perseverantly repeating words and sentences which – as he claims – sometimes cause repulsion in him. Simplified typeface, background colour, lines of text – horizontal, vertical or diagonal – construct the rhythm of these paintings, their seemingly slack aesthetics. Stencil letters and flat basic colours have been considered idiomatic for Susid’s „word-paintings” for a long time.

Author of subversive commentaries, ironically (often autoironically) referring to art and reality around him, has ceased to comment his favourite themes in a laconic manner. Instead of commenting, the artist quotes words, phrases, sentences which are commonly known, but repeated many times, they gain new meanings. According to the economics of repetition and difference, same words repeated differently are not the same anymore.

Texts and words painted on images and repeated on wallpapers are being „put on trial” by the artist. The stencil-painted words JESUS MARY become something more than a popular exclamation in common Polish. Texts used by Susid refer to various religions, politics and histories, distant from each other, but surprisingly familiar at the same time, as in the interchangeably repeated reference to the divine providence – the American and the German one. IN GOD WE TRUST, American national motto printed on coins and banknotes, harmonizes with the Prussian slogan GOTT MIT UNS, used by the German army uniform details before 1945.

Politicians’ sentences, ideological cliches, names of streets „in which everything began”, names and slogans switched to different ones in the process of rewriting history. National resentment resounds in a repeated and paraphrased slogan known from Ronald Reagan’s and Donald Trump’s election campaigns: MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN / MAKE POLAND GREAT AGAIN…

Absorbing words by repetition is not a mechanical sampling of borrowed phrases. The dynamics of repetition and difference introduces tension and adds a difference into a repeated phrase. As we can see and read from Susid’s paintings, the same words repeated elsewhere can often mean an entirely different thing. On his colourful paintings, ruled by the rhythm of repetition, the author quotes, juxtaposes, paraphrases, reduces to absurdity words and phrases commonly used in daily life. The ostentation with which the artist repeats vertically lined words BREATHE IN / BREATHE OUT shows that it’s not only about absorbing words, but also about being absorbed by them.