Aleksandra Waliszewska

Le carrefour des étranges vous présente, du moins à ceux qui ne la connaissent pas encore, Aleksandra Waliszewska. Une très très grande découverte pour moi ! Il s’agit d’une artiste polonaise qui commença par des peintures superbes, « académiques », influencées par Balthus ou les premières œuvres de Picasso.
Depuis quelques années, elle a radicalement changé de voie. Ses œuvres mettent en scène une violence très colorée ; hommes et bêtes s’y côtoient, s’y affrontent, s’y accouplent, s’y dévorent pour notre plus grand plaisir visuel. Nombre de ses personnages sont des enfants, rappelant à notre rétine les œuvres d’Henry Darger ou Maruo pour leur onirisme et leur radicalité. Un univers troublant, provocateur, plein de mouvement et d’inventivité, dont la richesse n’a pas fini de me surprendre. Merci à Aleksandra de nous faire suivre sa production sur son magnifique flickr et sur son blog. Mes remerciements également pour les réponses qu’elle a apportées à mes questions (posées en anglais approximatif) :

I'm interested by the way you completely change your subjects from academic to more violent and odd. I haven't seen much old works from you. There's one on your flickr i guess that's very balthusian. What do you think of these works now?

When I was making these images I was one of the better known, more successful young artists in Poland. Painting these, and they're mostly oil paintings, I was pretty well recognized,
published in catalogs and sold quite well. New works were an attempt to break with the rigueur that I created for myself doing "post-renaissance" paintings. Besides everything else, painting oils takes up horribly long time, and now I mostly do gouache on paper, much quicker and more modest, smaller scale but effective.

I know that's perhaps boring to hear that question as an artist but i'd really like to know who are the artists that influence the way you paint. Artists or movies or music perhaps...

Regarding inspirations, I'm still totally devoted to "old masters", like Hans Memling or Quarton, rather than following what's currently hot and modern. Of course, trashy horrors/exploitation movies/giallo/obscure sf that my boyfriend collects are important sources for inspiration.

Is it possible to find some book about your work ? Les Editions du 57 published a 16 pages book about your work in 2009, Healing Images. Maybe others ?

Regarding my more recent work, there's the publication you found (I'm glad that you came across it as it's pretty obscure) and I'm also featured in the last edition of Frederic Magazine (http://fredericmagazine.free.fr/) - there's some coloured pages of mine in it. I was also invited to participate in an edition of Le Muscle Carabine mag that's about to be pulished by United Dead Artists (http://www.lewub.com/udaroom/site.php). I hear it's in the works now.