English

Tadeusz Sawa-Borysławski’s reflection,  manifested in his projects and theoretical works, is a synthesis of artistic and academic understanding of the world. For years, he has been fascinated with the notion of chaos, its theory as the prime mover of reality, art and architecture. He  subjects environment, perceived as chaotic, to the processes of building the structures of order. Against the deductive rule, from the whole to detail, the artist photographs architectural details ; roofs, ornaments and cornices, which – separated form the composition of a building – make autonomous structures used in his next projects. Moving on the margin of an idea standing at the foundation of architectural composition, understanding it through a detail, he created an intriguing method of gaining initial material for further transformations. Elements used again may build a different composition, contradicting the original one or completely different aesthetics. Such practice and theory found its application in projects from the series Nantes (2004), which belong to the series Geometries of Chaos started in the 80s.

In recent years, Tadeusz Sawa-Borysławski’s methods of work and projects have been extended with the knowledge on the Lower Silesia cultural anthropology. Due to complicated historical turbulences and demographic changes, Wrocław, the artist’s home town, is a city whose collective memory reaches only as far as the second world war. Historical monuments, first of all historical buildings, do not belong to the history of the people who live there. The artist’s love for the local modernist architecture, which represents the highest world level, resulted in a new project. Archilims are tapestries – kilims built from photographs of architectural motifs, which were arranged into concentric compositions following the rule of kaleidoscope pictures. The images of ferroconcrete capitals, rows of windows or rounded corners, collected during the artist’s traditional method of working, created structures which are very dissimilar and belong to different aesthetics. Archilims are similar to traditional kilims of the East Carpathian culture, which used to be popular in Lower Silesia with the displaced people. These works have titles identical with the names of well-known architects (among others Poelzig, Scharoun, Mendelsohn, Zimmermann, 2005/2007).

Tadeusz Sawa-Borysławski (born 1952) in 1976 graduated from the Architecture Department of the Wrocław Polytechnic. He is an architect, practices graphic design, drawing and photography, he makes installations and participates in inter-media shows. He is the author of many publications about architecture and contemporary art. He is a lecturer at the Art Department of the Social Skills College in Poznań.

The artist’s works have been presented at many individual and group exhibitions. In 1987, the exhibition at the Foto-Medium-Art Gallery had the title Dream. In 2008, the same gallery presented his exhibition Geometries of Chaos -Archilim.