The Ukranian Institute of Modern Art mounted a fascinating exhibition of the collaborative works of poet Aleksander Najda and artist Vasyl Savchenko called “The Ground of Things.” Each “piece” in the exhibition consists of a poem by Najda and a corresponding charcoal drawing by Savchenko. The two met by chance in Gdansk, Poland, in 2019. They became familiar with each other’s work and decided to collaborate on a project. Najda would show a poem to Savchenko, and Savchenko would respond with a drawing. Or Savchenko would show a drawing to Najda, and Najda would write a poem in response. (Occassionally Najda would pull an existing poem from his files that he thought reflected the feelings of the drawing.) This collaboration was first shown at the WGS BWA, Contemporary Art Gallery (Old Mine) in Walbrzych, Poland, from 2022–2023.

        The works we see at UIMA are the product of translations. Najda’s poems were originally written in Polish; they have been translated into English  to be shown in the United States. Savchenko’s original charcoal drawings were photographed and transformed into silkscreens to ease transport.

        Both men work in Poland: the elder Najda is a native Pole, while 30-year-old Savchenko is a Ukranian who moved to Poland some eight years ago. Both have spent time in Chicago: Najda received a PhD in art history from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Savchenko has made several trips to the city.

        In response to this synergetic effort, the New Art Examiner has decided to review this exhibition collaboratively between poet Ed Roberson and critic Michel Ségard.

        The paired pieces in this exhibit are the result of the works of the two artists, Najda and Savchenko. A more verbally oriented viewer, such as another poet, might perceive them as kinds of correspondences that seem to be of three kinds or elements: visual recognitions, read translations, and interpretations. In visual recognitions, one artist represents or re-pictures something seen in the other’s marks or graphics. To re-see is to understand or respond with understanding. In a read translation, the collaborating artists translate each other’s experience through a universal tradition or encyclopedia of symbols and their meaning. The marks are re-made into a verbal statement. In the interpretations, there is more of each individual’s response–a reaction to the gesture of the mark making, to the intensity or density, as well as the emotional coloration of the image. We have chosen six pieces from the exhibition that illustrate these three ways of interpreting the works in this show.

 

Visual Recognitions

Passage

        Roberson: I find these collaborations/correspondences to be especially brilliant in their translation element. The work named Passage “translates” the accompanying graphic into a poem that is eloquently straightforward and literal, the interplay of the expressions simply beautiful. Three horizontally stacked parallel lines—if wavy, universally symbolize water, a river; if peaked, then mountains in a landscape. The mark of an X traditionally denotes here, a location, a stop, or quit, i.e., to X-out. Its palimpsest shape, broken, erased, could be read as “slipping.” We pick up this message that the water of reality is slipping through the graphic as well as the river image in the poem.

        Ségard: There is immediate visual recognition in Passage. The three horizontal marks in Savchenko’s drawing clearly represent the river in the poem. And the X shape strongly suggests a human form, especially on the left where a white echo of the X form holds a raised hand with a knife(?). The right side has markings near the top of the X that resemble a face. Yet the image is sublimely abstract. But—were the poem not next to it—it could also be interpreted as prehistoric glyph on a cliff face. The poem addresses this ambiguity in its last stanza: “Reality slips/Through my fingers/Like water.”

 

Self Analysis

        Roberson: Using the same symbol-to-language system of translation in another collaboration, but this time with the X replaced by the circle as the ideograph for an enclosed event, location, or place of person, i.e., a face. I find a second literal, straight-forward translation or re-drawing in their collaboration. In the drawing, the layered horizontal lines read as landscape, water, while the circle reads as bubble, island, person, a face. This juxtaposition provides a vocabulary for the very lovely, visually metonymic poem as a translation of the artists’ drawing.

        Ségard: Self Analysis is a kind of companion to Passage. Both have the horizontal lines that can be interpreted as water. But in this drawing, the circles are the forms that disrupt the flow. One can read a face in the circles, and segments of the charcoal shading begin to resemble fingerprints. The poem suggests a larger, deeper, unseen entity. One that is hinted at in the drawing by the left-hand curves that suggest the back of a human form, along with the right-hand protrusion that could be a knee—a body immersed in the water that is not seen. The melancholy of the poem is also suggested in the drawing with the dichotomy of the gentle suggestions of the face and the rough rendering of the circles that form it—the co-existence of good and evil.

 

Read Translations

Anonymous Miracle

        Roberson: A poem in the recognition mode is Anonymous Miracle. As a lifelong frequent flyer, it immediately brought to my mind a night flight window seat and seeing out the window to distant moving lights —moving because they are streaks on the dark, not static dots. I’ve even been fortunate enough to see the rare phenomenon of stratospheric lightning sprites where lightning moves up from the clouds instead of down toward the earth. So, at the first printed words “On the plane/ Berlin – Paris” —as at that first glance at the image —I already knew what the poem was about. The artists were so accurate and in tune with their seeing.

        Ségard: Anonymous Miracle reminds me of some of the recent work of Dan Ramirez. His series Vertical Thoughts: Meditation on the Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross was replete with the suggestion of portals to another reality. In Anonymous Miracle, the first things I perceived were two columns with a “lintel” connecting them. They form a kind of portal through which pass diagonal streaks. Strangely, they seem to be aimed upward, although there is no direct evidence of this direction except for the fact that more streaks are near the top-right of the drawing. The pillars made me think of Stonehenge, and the ascending streaks made me think of the mysticism associated with that prehistoric monument. Yet this image was inspired by seeing lightning sprites through an airplane window—maybe there is a mystical connection through time “seen in the old masters’ altars countless times.”

 

Untitled

        Roberson: The work, Untitled, would appear to be the extreme of the recognizable, illustrative collaboration. Here is the illustration, if not the portrait, of what is not seeable— a spirit. Yet, visual tradition has faces, symbols for its spirits. This is the dark one with animalistic horns and a shapeshifting shadow self. As Mick Jagger has suggested, you might know his name. The identifying face in the poem possessively turns the reader here to stone.

        Ségard: The drawing in this untitled piece is clearly the image of a bull. Motion is implied by the white “shadow” behind the dark face. The poem suggests that this is not a benevolent entity, that it might represent the darker side of ourselves that we are afraid to face. In this and several other drawings, Savchenko uses the device of a white “shadow image” to denote movement. It is a very frugal means of depicting motion and depth.

 

Interpretations

Goodbye

        Roberson: Of these collaboration modes, the interpretation mode is more interactive than the other two. It is enigmatic because more of the result of the interaction is there, and less of the evidence. Yet, it feels richer and more deeply true. The collaboration titled Goodbye is a powerful example. The text poem is the most complete and assessable, and, perhaps, the only full narrative in the series. The graphic, however, is the most minimal of marks in all the collaborations. Both viewers and readers receive the fullness of the collaboration, but both seem to have been left out of the work, the conversation. That conversation of creativities between the artists is the astonishing interpretation which results as the impact of Goodbye.

        Ségard: Goodbye as a graphic is indeed the most minimal, if ambiguous. At first glance, it looks like a nail, but closer inspection suggests a hand mirror, which makes more sense with the poem. Its sparse rendering initially leaves a viewer wanting more. But taken as an illustration of the poem, it is complete.

 

Orpheus

       Roberson: Another kind of collaborative interpretation is Orpheus. Yet, where in the graphic is a symbolic mark indicating music, or horns, trumpet, or violin? Against a “medieval hurdy -gurdy?” And what is there to indicate that a solo harp is being written in to undercut all of this? There is only a visual buzz and a mark on the space presented to us by the artists!

        Ségard: Interpretation of the image is really difficult for Orpeheus. As Roberson points out, there is no suggested image of any musical instrument. He notes that there is “only a visual buzz.” That “buzz” looks like a fingerprint at first glance, but the horizontal lines in the “print” parallel each other and could be interpreted as the combined sounds of a musical ensemble. The thick form at the bottom vaguely looks like the hand of a conductor holding a baton. Still, this is one of the most abstract pieces in the show, vis-à-vis its accompanying poem, and a visual interpretation of the piece is strictly for the mind of the viewer.

* * *

        “The Ground of Things” delves in a highly abstract way into the interplay between images and words and in the translation of concepts from one “language” to another. Aleksander Najda and Vasyl Savchenko communicate not only across disciplines, but also across generations (Najda is more than twice Savchenko’s age). In this exhibition, viewers are challenged to expand their interaction with the works and broaden their understanding of the commonality of concepts, even when presented in significantly different forms.

Ed Roberson is Emeritus Professor, Northwestern University. He is the author of many books of poetry, most recently Ask What Has Changed, 2021 (Wesleyan University Press), and MPH and Other Road Poems, 2021 (Verge Publications).

Michel Ségard is the Editor in Chief of the New Art Examiner and a former adjunct assistant professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago He has been a published art critic for more than 45 years and is also the author of numerous exhibition catalog essays.