Wiesław Dymny. Five and a Half of Pale Joe
- Wiesław Dymny. Five and a Half of Pale Joe
- 26.10–24.11.2024
- curators: Marta Miś, Michał Dymny
The exhibition of Wiesław Dymny’s work at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Opole does not aim to be a complete monograph on the artist, but rather an attempt to capture the essence of his multifaceted oeuvre. Born in 1936, Dymny died prematurely at the age of 42. Throughout his adult life he was closely associated with Kraków, where he is still remembered as a legendary figure. Dymny is best known as a co-founder of the Piwnica pod Baranami cabaret, as a performer of satirical monologues and as a songwriter. It was his lyrics for Czarne anioły [Black Angels] that helped Ewa Demarczyk win the first National Festival of Polish Song in Opole in 1963. However, Wiesław Dymny's artistic interests extended far beyond the cabaret stage. He was a painter, sculptor, illustrator, set and costume designer, prose writer, poet, screenwriter and occasional actor. His art was inseparable from his life.
The exhibition Five and a Half of Pale Joe focuses on works united by a common narrative element, a feature present in many of Dymny's artistic disciplines. He made his literary debut in 1963 with a collection of short stories, but the artist's archive, preserved by Anna Dymna, contains a variety of literary forms, many of them unrealised. Although Dymny’s early passion was painting, which he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, it is the written and spoken word that seems to have shaped his entire artistic output. He skilfully combined image and text, particularly in his design work, where he was fascinated by typography. His anecdotal style is also evident in his drawings and collages, where he played with formats such as satirical drawings, comics and newspaper columns. The works in the exhibition reveal not only the artist’s talent and passions, but also the Zeitgeist – the spirit of the times. Dymny was a product of his time – shaped by the experience of war and later by the search for joy and beauty amidst the grim realities of life in communist Poland.
The medium that fully expressed Wieslaw Dymny's creative personality, combining the two fields he was passionate about – literature and the visual arts – seems to have been film. From the late 1950s, he appeared on the screen as an actor, playing supporting and cameo roles in films by renowned directors like Andrzej Wajda, Kazimierz Kutz and Stanisław Różewicz. However, his place in the history of Polish cinema was cemented as the screenwriter of three films directed by Henryk Kluba: Skinny and Others, The Sun Rises Once a Day and Five and a Half of Pale Joe. The stories told in these films are drawn from his literary universe and show him as a keen observer and listener of reality. The title of the exhibition refers directly to the 1971 film, emphasising not only the importance of this medium in Wiesław Dymny’s artistic activity, but also the multiplicity of his creative personas.
