Sylwester Ambroziak is a mid-generation artist. He strongly marked his presence on the Polish artistic scene in the late 80’s. Today, his artistic work is still hard to overlook – a number of exhibitions and accompanying publications are the best evidence of this fact. A unique position of Ambroziak results from persistence in following the chosen artistic path. It can be defined by both, an unchanged formal convention (figurative approach), as well as a firm ethical choice visible in his expressions poetics. From an emotional point of view, the sculptures by Ambroziak are still distinguished by the dramatic crescendo that used to be associated with Neue Wilde exaltation and the anti-aesthetic program. Today, this is a recognizable feature of the author, of his mature individual style, enriched with the unique subject matter of his human fate stories.
Thus, it has not been a temporary calculated move resulting from the then aesthetic trends. This has been a conscious decision written into the expressionist narration stream. The timeless stream with complex genealogy (archaic, primitive, folk sculpture), varying in style both from analytical formalism, as well as from the aesthetic oriented contemporary sculpture.
His art seems to have a universal message to convey. With regard to this, the author has chosen an easy to understand, legible form, even risking being labeled an epigone.
In person, Sylwester Ambroziak appears affirmative, optimistic – possibly a hedonist by his own choice – certainly a mature man who has fulfilled his life roles. The artistic temperament in a way opposes the vision of man who is so convincingly described by this art. His characters look as though they were Job’s offspring. They experience bodily and spiritual torment. They are trying their belief, unable to grasp mentally all the unhappiness they are faced with. Their blown-up heads with uniform physiognomies are always lowered, becoming a stigmata, a stamp. Sometimes, they are supporting one another in their painful experience. The brotherhood of gestures, tenderness, evidences of love are a confirmation of the archetype links and timeless solidarity. They are so convincing that our sight perception immediately turns into an authentic emotional empathy. Perhaps one can even discover his own identity among the underprivileged whom we recognize as our fellow human beings who are not indifferent to us. It might be possible to prove a psychological hypothesis that this is a traumatic description of a humiliated and enslaved tribal community (the society of late communist Poland, with no opportunities for self-development, degraded by the social misery) at the period when the young artist’s awareness had been shaped. Quite symptomatic feature is provided by the appearance of the Polish „ubermensch” figure – additionally entangled in patriotic and martyrdom context. In this art, in the artist – the work of art relation, there is an unsolved mystery, the less transparent, the more intriguing. It could be that the compassio concept, present in passion series (i.e., Madonna holding Christ’s dead body) is a key to this. She expressed – in a human dimension – a sense of compassion and fellow sympathy at the verge of the divine and human world where the divine drama had been happening in a human-cut measure.
Sylwester Ambroziak has frequently dealt with similar motives, illustrating human dramas by Biblical scenes (Isaac’s Sacrifice, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Prodigal Son’s Return). It seems that his type of sensitivity made him an advocate of human unfortunate fate resulting from a cosmic division of the divine from the human, the sublime from the earthly. His characters are down to earth human beings, marked with the original sin, hard working. Their bodies contradict an image of an absolutely perfect human being created to resemble God. Their physical characteristics oppose idealization and anthropomorphism being a result of human aspirations for perfect, timeless Apollonian beauty in the Ancient sculpture aesthetics. They are not some kind of anthropoid creatures with monster like characteristics and malformed proportions, just ordinary, weary people, tortured by their fate fatality, Adam’s descendants coping with the hardships of life. They are mortified, though still spontaneous in their actions, not humiliated enough so as to renounce their humanity and the desire to be happy. They happen to be happy dancing a Bacchic dance. Perhaps in this world dialectics, the Dionysian joy motives are a natural counter balance and a factor complementing the disturbed primeval harmony.
The sculptures by Ambroziak do not involve pathological malformations, delight in ugliness, degenerated caricature or monstrous grotesque illustrated on a large scale by the fantasy followers. In spite of physical disabilities, these characters emanate noble dignity which is their spiritual asset. Being rough on the surface, they are proud to extend a testimony of brotherhood in this community of the wretched.
I am not familiar with any explicitly presented artistic credo by Ambroziak. Intuitively, I believe that while playing a demiurge of this world, the artist attempts to make up for all the undeserved unhappiness people have experienced in this vale of tears. He creates an alternative world for them (the lost paradise ersatz) where an ideal goodness is not necessarily associated with the ideal beauty. If these people are not completely fulfilled, they are good by nature, bound to rely on themselves, destined to love, being the source of love for one another.
Mariusz Konorowski