Mandala — siries 2016 — 2018

MANDALA

In medio stat Veritas

Some people still maintain that the center is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. Recognizing this fact, we condemn ourselves to billions of axes around which we may orbit. For others, there is only one center. The final focus of concentration, a necessity fulfilled, the highest value. For many, this center contains the primary element of everything — the divine being. Mandala is a Sanskrit term that refers to a magic circle, a nimbus, a disk, an orbit of a celestial body. Mandala is supposed to be an expression of the metaphysical structure of the world. With an image of the deity or its attributes placed in the middle of its concentric composition.

What remains for me, a human being full of uncertainty, doubt and suspicion, is the black circumference — a perimeter of a dignified yet capacious color, able to embrace everything, secrets both great and numerous. The black circumference can be infinitely small or an infinitesimal, boundless one. What occurs around the black ring can be a matter of meditation, a trace of the passage of time, a quest for new clashes, concepts or signs, or else it just fills up the space around it, a decoration or background for the black center. My paintings and drawings are doomed to “one look”. The elements surrounding the center may come and go, constituting a specific accompaniment.

Andrzej Strumiłło, The catalog, Podlasie Museum in Białystok