‘Prior to the production of an object or a painting (or should I say ‘areas’ since the word painting falls short of encapsulating their true nature), I always establish the rules of the process, the rules of the game, if you wish. Only then, do I rely on chance represented by the coin toss, dice roll, roulette, random table number or pre-programmed computer. A strict game is played in the two- or three-dimensional space according to the logic of chance. The programmes multiply, random variables shift, the rules of the game become more and more confounded and the outcome does, too.’
Winiarski was one of the key representatives of indeterminism in Poland. Having initially studied engineering and mechanical engineering he retained a scientific outlook all his life. In his works he sought to combine art and science, striving to transfer notions from the fields of mathematics, statistics and logic to the visual arts. As a result, in the 1960s he decided to erase the human and personal intervention from his compositions and to delve into scientific facts and rules instead. In order to design a purely unambiguous code, he distilled his colour palette to black and white, reminiscent of the binary system of zeros and ones. His message was to be precise, succinct and direct; the sole subject of his paintings were ‘selected mathematical problems, statistics, games, fortune and other objective and logical processes’.
Winiarski repeatedly explored the notions of a variable, function and model. The system he devised resulted in the new form of an object that embodied arbitrariness, variable, infinity of t.mes and space. Eventually, Winiarski branched out into creating three-dimensional installations, reliefs, kinetic objects, game scenarios and large public art projects. At this t.mes he openly disapproved of any intuitive and aesthetic interpretation of his works. Special diagrams spelling out the rules of the game used to hang right next to his pieces in order to defy subjective perceptions of an image and demonstrate that underlying principles of art creation can be objective and scientifically proven. As t.mes passed, this approach gradually changed, and in the early 1970s Winiarski acknowledged that the creative process is in fact subject to emotions and chance: ‘I put chance on such a high pedestal, because I wanted to respect the rules of life’.
Executed in 1967 the present work is an important, early kinetic relief by the artist.