Roman Cieslewicz. Visualist

About

Roman Cieslewicz is in us. If it is still possible not to know his name, it is however impossible not to know his images. A major artist in the graphic arts scene of the second half of the 20th century, Roman Cieslewicz (1930-1996) shaped the collective imagination and imprinted his style in the deepest part of the retina of any spectator walking his eyes in France from the sixties. and after.

Craftsman of the success of the Polish fashion magazine Ty i ja, he is hired on his arrival in France in 1963 by Peter Knapp to modernize the model of Elle, then continues the orders for Vogue, editions 10/18, later for Liberation , The World, etc. In 1967, he accompanied the birth of a new contemporary art magazine, Opus International, whose covers, now icons, are still in circulation today. He drew the graphic formulas for the "Paris / ..." exhibitions (Berlin in 1978, Moscow in 1979, Paris in 1981) at the Center Pompidou, and published a book on Che Guevara that continues to make a name for itself. 1

Roman Cieslewicz is not only the incarnation of the modernity of the sixties and seventies, he is one of those who created and designed it, succeeding the synthesis of the time thanks to his sharp perception. His taste for elemental form and the treatment of contrasts, the word-image relationship as a cardinal value and his extreme attention to typography, have forged his recognizable, innovative and iconic style. If the black and white underlined with a touch of red are recognized as his signature, the hiatus or the break also form a distinctive feature of his style.

Above all, Roman Cieslewicz is known for his bulimia of images. Collector of any support, he was at the same time, gazettophile, Jocondophile, pictopublicéphile, phlogophile, glycophile, 2as our friend François Barré tells us. This ardor is found for example in collages such as Harem, where at a glance, it is possible to embrace a large collection.Originally, the photomontage Harem was realized in 1969 for the promotion campaign of Prisunic, entrusted to the agency MAFIA, with which Cieslewicz was associated. First printed on communication objects, Harem, with the usual versatility of Cieslewicz images, quickly contaminated other media. This natural porosity between commissioning work and workshop practice, finally confirms Cieslewicz's position as author; graphic artist-artist, he preferred to designate himself as a "visual artist" or a member of the "brotherhood of the artisans of the image".

However, this bombardment, this overflow of images succeeds in the early 1970s its more frugal trend of "retinal switch" with its famous visual "Zoom against pollution of the eye."This is the beginning of the centered collages to which belong Arturo, Acupuncture, Arrabal, Cérès Franco or Bobby Fischer, cyclopean monsters whose eye, too unique, disturbs. A glimpse of Dziga Vertov's "film-eye" manifesto, the eye is the central motif, absent or, on the contrary, supported, as in Che's famous poster, where he is replaced by "CHE SI". "Cieslewicz was first and foremost an eye," wrote Amelie Gastaut, an eye that tries to look reality in the face. » 3An irreducible craftsman - even after the appearance of digital tools - Roman Cieslewicz worked with the simplest means, scissors, brush and glue, and a certain happiness of accident and imperfections, provoked by impatience; "The gesture, the pencil respond faster to my ideas than any mechanical tool. »Mirror effect, symmetry, parallel, repetition, cropping of the image at its center, enlargement or reduction, flattening, cutting, juxtaposition or multiplication, in one direction or the other, gray leveling, forcing contrasts, descreening and trimming, accentuation, stylization, line work, flat areas.All operations go through, the entire graphic suite is dismounted and reassembled.

If the reiteration of the image is a constant of the work, the photomontages, like Party or Gâteux with the low Dim constitute also an important part, more intimate, more personal, more engaged too. Heir to masters' collages, such as Max Ernst and Kurt Schwitters, or to Alexander Rodchenko's constructivist photomontages, Roman Cieslewicz renews the genre by using the means of reproduction and popular iconography of his time. He is often associated with his elder Bruno Schulz - with whom he shares a certain melancholy poetry and whose work he defended - but also in a completely different spirit to his colleagues Roland Topor, Fernando Arrabal and Alessandro Jodorowski, gathered at the Panic Group, founded in 1960. In its extension, Roman Cieslewicz created Kamikaze in 1976, the magazine Panic information4 .

Black humor and bitter causticity infuse every work, like BB Seals. Holding a very hexagonal, more fetishist than really active, Dorothée, Boy I, Party and Foot Panic remonstrate with the voyeur. "I am a pirate, says Roman Cieslewicz, but a pirate who participates in a new media alphabet [...] An image that does not shock, it's not worth it.Like its global production, this exhibition is abounding, signs circulate, bounce from one image to another, desires and fears spring up and sometimes explode in the face. Of these "visual attacks", Jean-Christophe Bailly says: "What we see is not made to please, nor to pass, but to stay, and the images caught in the trap that sets them and naked fall or fall back on the meaning. "5 Warning, panic!

Laetitia Chauvin