Drang Oder Gang / Urge or Pace

Two years ago, on the occasion of the exhibition Sport Oder Port, I examined the human condition through the lens of extreme physical effort. Swimmers frozen on the edge of a dive, kayakers battling river currents – I was interested then in determination, in the almost heroic attempt to give life direction against the resistance of matter. Endurance had a concrete, physical dimension there. Today I step down from that arena. I leave behind the great struggles and move into the space of ordinary everyday life. What interests me now is the moment that most often escapes our notice – the commonplace, transparent fact of human presence and movement through space.

The exhibition’s title, Drang Oder Gang, was born from a play on words that perfectly captures what I try to grasp in painting and printmaking. In German, these three short, rhythmic words carry a fascinating duality: Drang is urge, drive, inner compulsion, sudden impulse. Something that makes us run, push forward, seek something more. Oder, the Oder river, which physically flows through the Świna in Świnoujście, linking back to the previous exhibition, but in German is also the conjunction „or.” Gang, in turn, is simply gait, step, but also the natural course of events or mechanical rhythm. In automotive terms, it is also a gear, which allows a machine to move smoothly.

And this is what these works are about. About the tension between Drang and Gang. About the dilemma of whether, as we function in the world, we are driven by inner, existential restlessness, or whether we surrender to an automatic, imposed rhythm. In my new paintings and intaglio prints, however, you will not find movement alone. I abandon literal narrative, showing people, most often men, in entirely ordinary situations. Some are on their way, in transition, in the process of changing place. Others, however, freeze into stillness: they sit, stand facing walls, wait. For me, this stillness against the wall is not the opposite of the road – it is an integral part of it. It is a moment of pause, a second of suspension, in which the question of direction and meaning becomes most pressing. A person walking forward or remaining in waiting, stripped of distinct attributes and a clear goal, becomes someone universal. Moving from point A to point B – or stopping somewhere in between – each of us, in some way, maps out our own fate.

I do not reveal where my protagonists are heading or what they are waiting for, because I do not know myself. I leave them, and you, with a question about the very nature of this road. Does its purpose exist at all, or does it arise only in the act of walking and in the moments of stopping? In choosing both the painterly stain and the precision of the graphic line for these depictions, I wanted to create a space for reflection. Drang Oder Gang is, for me, a deeply personal record of observing people who, without unnecessary pathos, simply are – who walk, who remain, and who, through their very existence, attempt to tame the unknown territory of everyday life.