HUMAN RESERVATION

” (…) (1959) The object became the key problem for me. It created a new sphere of  s e n s i t i v i t y, or in other words, a new aesthetics.

I call this sphere  p o o r  r e a l i t y  or  r e a l i t y  o f  t h e  l o w e s t  r a n k.
(1960) The object is inaccessible to us. All the formal procedures aimed at “d i s c o v e r i n g” it have ended in a fiasco. Only objects of “the lowest rank”, “poor”, that one remove from the garbage bin, wrecks, reveal their autonomous, “o b j e c t i v e” existence, as a result of losing their practical-life functions and their aesthetic values (which prevented them from coming out into the open).

Hence my fascination with  t h e  p o o r  r e a l i t y,

the reality of t h e  l o w e s t  r a n k  r e g i o n s  in the hierarchy of objects,

condemned to be  d u m p e d, t o  b e  d e s t r o y e d”.
(1960) can’t that (object) be “touched” “artificially”, through a negative, a n  i m p r e s s i o n  or a  d i s g u i s e, or that which is  d i s g u i s e d?…”

Pleśniarowicz, Krzysztof (chosen and ed. by).  Metamorfozy. Teksty o latach 1938-1974. [Metamorphosis. Texts about the years 1928 – 1974] Kraków: Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor Cricoteka, Księgarnia Akademicka, Kraków 2000, p. 359.