Caledonian Road Series is a new work by Jaroslaw Kozlowski, showing for seven days at Matt’s Gallery.

Jaroslaw Kozlowski is a Polish artist  living in Poznan (born 1945). He has had several one-man shows in Poland, Hungary, Sweden, Denmark, West Germany, and Brazil, and participated in many international exhibitions and art symposiums in Europe, USA, Canada, South America, Japan and Australia. He has published many of his own books in limited editions, as well as appearing in several international anthologies and books on contemporary art.

The work of Kozlowski concentrated until about 1975 on the examination of linguistic and logical models, and on the analysis of the rules and means by which the mind constructs an image of reality, the 'art-work' as object was replaced by analytical investigation. This activity did not concern itself with 'things' but with linguistic structures and conceptual models. The artist assumed, as it were, the status of a 'grammarian'. Therefore, the elimination of the physical world from art was followed by the consideration of the languages through which man establishes the world of concepts. Kozlowski also sought forms of linguistic reality which had reference to extra-linguistic activity. An example of this kind is the system of punctuation marks in written language. This was the subject of his book Reality, which presented some of the punctuation used in an excerpt from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

About 1975-76 Kozlowski abandoned linguistic and logical models in his work. Since that time he has concerned himself with what in very general terms could be defined as 'Real Work'. This means the work as a 'fact', or, as an act which takes real time and occupies real space, and is its own reality. It has no references beyond the category of representation or the question of picturing.

It is in this way that the following works should be understood; ‘Drawing Facts’, a continuous series of paper and wall drawing he began in 1975 and his 'Wall Paintings’ (1978-79), 'Wall Sculptures' (1979). 'Time-, Weight-, and Quantity-Drawings' (1979-80), as well as the Caledonian Road Series, to be shown for the first time in London at Matt’s Gallery.

In a text written in 1976 which acts as a kind of introduction to his work Kozlowski writes: ‘For a man who is an 'artist-as-a-man’ his art can become the 'sense' which he imparts to the world

(....) Sense is a basis for intelligibility; it may be uncovered through a satisfactory interpretation able to penetrate that which covers, blurs and darkens the real relations between things'.