Stanisław Dróżdż - Zak | Branicka

Stanisław Dróżdż
Stanisław Dróżdż (born 1939 in Sławków, Poland, died 2009 in
Wrocław, Poland) was the renowned creator of Polish Concrete
Poetry. In 1968 he debuted in the no longer extant Pod Mona Lisą
Gallery in Wrocław, and from 1971 on he worked continuously with
Foksal Gallery in Warsaw. In 1979, he published the book Concrete
Poetry. Selected Polish texts and documentation from the years
1967–77. He was in constant contact with key protagonists of
Concrete Poetry from around the world, including Ian Hamilton
Finlay, Eugen Gomringer and Vaclav Havel.
The basis of Stanisław Dróżdż’s works are always short texts or
words. These evolve into images and are put into a new context by
destroying their semantic meanings through a specific connection
or arrangement on a flat layer or in space. In 1967, still unaware of
the existence of Concrete Poetry, Dróżdż started writing a kind of
poetry, for which he came up with the name Concept Shapes and
whose form reflected its content. Dróżdż thought of himself as
a poet, although he wanted to materialise words in such a way
that the practice of viewing itself became a process of actually
understanding words. Even then, Dróżdż was interested in the
connection between words and space. In his most famous work
Untitled (between) installed at Foksal Gallery, in 1977, the word is
written into the space of the gallery.
In the numerical and linguistic works of Stanisław Dróżdż, the
artist tests the principles according to which both of these
systems function (language or mathematics) and tries to list all
possible combinations. Language to him was a system of sets
where he ran through all possible operations. This is exemplified
in his work Algebra of Prepositions (1987) which is a geometric
illustration of possible combinations of prepositions. The work
Permutations (1989), which is similar in style, is a record of all
the letter combinations in the word permutation. His search for
combinatoric rules led him to the work Alea iacta est, which was
exhibited in the Polish pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2003.
Stanisław Dródżdż during the preparation of
the exhibition between in the Foksal Gallery,
Warsaw, 1977

Untitled (Zapominanie, Forgetting, Vergessen, Unhotaminen), 1967/2000
Forgetting, alongside between, has become Stanisław Dróżdż’s
flagship work. Since it first appeared at an exhibition in Wrocław in
1968, it has been included in the artist’s subsequent work, and in
anthologies of concrete poetry. Originally, like all his works, it was
in typewritten form; then it took the shape of a picture painted in
black ink on white cardboard and displayed on a wall. Stanisław
Dróżdż has presented his work as wall installations since the late
1960s, while the three later language versions (apart from Polish)
of Forgetting (English, Finnish, and German) were first put on
display in 2000 at the exhibition curated by Anda Rottenberg,
entitled Amnesia. Die Gegenwart des Vergessens at the Neues
Museum Weserburg in Bremen before being presented again at
ŻAK | BRANICKA Gallery in 2012.
The tightly grouped white letters of Forgetting, written in sansserif,
bolded font, use the strategy of leaving off the last item in
the set to create severed right-angle triangle with sides of various
lengths on a black background. This heavy figure shorn of some of
its parts points toward the mechanism of the forgetting process
itself, which, according to Dróżdż, is irreversible. In his sketch for
this work, the artist writes: “It transfers the meaning of the word
onto its graphic design, the graphic signifies an operation, a lack
of particular content. The logical combination of two things with
no logical connection—the meaning and its symbol, i.e. the
word. A construction ensuring an almost maximum objectivity of
reception.” (1.)
As in most of Dróżdż’s first works, Forgetting joins the figurative
with semantics. A key strategy is the reduction of symbols—the
removal of letters. In Forgetting the letters vanish, their number
shrinks, leaving independently meaningless fragments of words,
the remains after the ends have been cut. Dróżdż’s Forgetting is
imagined like the shrinking of memory, the changes to its shape,
and the impossibility of grasping for its remote regions, the result
of the pressure of time—a shift into the misty past. Forgetting is
a natural attribute, like remembering, which is why both these
acts take place in thought, i.e. in concrete language, in words and
through words. Wiesław Borowski wrote of Forgetting: “A word
from which a letter has been torn, like “forgetting” for instance,
builds an unexpectedly concrete space around itself, initiating
the process of rediscovering its full significance, without added
contexts and definitions. For the viewer this space is an utterly new
experience. It is as though the familiar word is being seen for the
first time, as if now one must recall it all over again.” (2.)
1. Stanisław Dróżdż, [2012], p. 1, manuscript, archive of the Potocka
Gallery in Krakow.
2. Wiesław Borowski, Dróżdż, p. 2,634.
The text uses fragments of Małgorzata Dawidek Gryglicka’s
“Forgetting” from the book Historia tekstu wizualnego. Polska po
1967 roku, Krakow: Ha!art, 2012.
Exhibition curated by Anda Rottenberg, Amnesia. Die Gegenwart des Vergessens at the Neues Museum Weserburg in Bremen, 2000

Algebra przyimków (Algebra of Prepositions), 1987
Stanisław Dróżdż‘s Algebra of Prepositions uses tools from three
disciplines—linguistics (syntax), mathematics (linear algebra) and
visual arts. The artist has selected parts of speech in the Polish
language: the prepositions z [with], w [in] and przez [through],
as well as the negative pronoun nigdzie [nowhere], which he has
defined as an “indefinite pronoun”—and uses them as examples
of symbols that serve to mark sets in mathematics: square and
rounded brackets. Putting these brackets in a series of variants
he defined the sets for the activity of pronouns. At the last stage
of work, the artist established an individual visual code for these
sets, subordinating the line drawing to each of them. It is this
simplest of geometrical forms—the line—that became the visual
representation of the relations between symbols culled from the
two above-named disciplines of study.
As with his other mathematically-based works, so too in Algebra of
Prepositions, Stanisław Dróżdż has taken precise rules to establish
an order to layout components. The mathematical principle of nonrepeating
variables decides upon the shape of the line drawings
that run through the various frames of Algebra of Prepositions.
This means that no layout repeats itself twice through all the line
compositions. The form of the drawing does not come from the
artist, it is not the result of an experiment, game, or accident, it
is the resultant of mathematical calculations. The drawing not
only has artistic value, but also value calculated and supported
by proof. Its shape is objectively established and determined by
mathematical solutions. The compositions of segments, running
lines and blank spaces are the result of a complex principle of
permutation defined by a relevant formula.
At the same time, the line drawings are hand-drawn, creating
associations with handwriting and equations and the principle
of one-way notation (from left to right). These stretches of nonrepeating
variables are “narrative variations” on the theme of the
line. Algebra of Prepositions is thus another experiment with
symbols, which have appeared often in the artist’s work to date.
More than any of his other works, Algebra of Prepositions shows
Stanisław Dróżdż’s trust in science. It proves that his creative and
poetic choices are based on science, not on imagination and
intuition. At the same time, the work shows the coherence of
the disciplines, their dependency on the flow of data and mutual
translation, of which Dróżdż has spoken in all of his work. The harsh
and disciplined visual code of algebra, allowing for no randomness
or creative impression, paradoxically points to the capability of
extreme communication systems integrating and intermingling.
Algebra of Prepositions confirms the artist’s fidelity to the idea of
art founded on hard scientific principles; art which grafts these
principles onto its terrain, adapts to its requirements, recreates
rules and speaks in its own universal language.
Małgorzata Dawidek Gryglicka, Wrocław, July 2012
Installation view at Foksal Gallery, Warsaw, 1987

Między (Between), 1977/2004, installation
Stanislaw Dróżdż has created a poem that you can inhabit,
amplifying the everyday experience of language in its written
form. In Polish the word miedzy means „between.“ On the walls,
floor, and ceiling of a room of exactly prescribed proportions,
the letters of the Polish word are arrayed and angled following a
precise system. Through repetition and alignment, a commonplace
word becomes a graphic object whose meaning is composed
in space. When viewers step inside the room, the black letters
arranged against the white walls impact them optically, physically,
and perhaps even sonically (the letters evoking the sound of the
spoken word). When you are inside the structure, you enact the
implications of the piece: you are between word and meaning,
language and image, art and everyday life.

Alea iacta est, 2003
(installation at Polish Pavilion, 50th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennial)
It is a form of a game played according to rules laid down by the artist. The walls of the pavilion were
covered by 46 656 dice, exhausting all the possible combinations of throws. The rules consist in throwing
six dice and finding the resultant combination among those hanging on the walls. Dróżdż adds the sixth
dice as he considers all the six walls of the dice equally important.
Permutations, 1989
(series contains ten computer printouts on paper mounted on boards, 60 × 21 cm each)
This work is a good example of how Dróżdż used the mathematical permutation rule to rearrange
the letters from the word permutation in order to show the relationship between mathematics and
language.
Photo credits:
page 2. Stanisław Dródżdż, photo: Jerzy Borowski, courtesy: Foksal Gallery, Warsaw
page 5. Forgetting, photo: Anda Rottenberg
page 6. Algebra of Prepositions, photo: Jerzy Borowski, courtesy: Foksal Gallery, Warsaw
page 10. Alea iacta est, photo: Andrzej Świetlik
© ŻAK | BRANICKA, 2012
concept: Asia Żak Persons and Monika Branicka
cooperation: Katharina Peter
english translation: Soren Gauger
Dlaczego (Why), 1975
(series contains twentyseven 1-sided boards and twelve 2-sided boards, 47 × 52 cm each)
In this piece Dróżdż uses a set of panels as a means for the repeated use of the word Why. Touching
on a more philosophical dimension, Dróżdż uses this why why connection as a way to probe into the
essence of what is a question.
We would like to thank: Anna Dróżdż, Małgorzata Dawidek Gryglicka, Anda Rottenberg, Timothy Persons and Foksal Gallery.
Kindly supported by Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.
Mniej wiecej tyle samo (Less more the same), 1973
(series contains nine typescripts mounted on boards 46 × 70 cm)
The work Less more the same is based on the combination of terms that are mutually
exclusive. Dróżdż repeats the words Less, More, The Same to create his own parody by using
his language through the combination of opposites.
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