Art Basel Michal Budny - Art Statements

Michal Budny's works are mostly reflections on simple objects, natural phenomena or psychological states, but at the same time they are sculpture objects with an unusual potential. Their form combines analytical imagination, geometrical poetics of minimalism and materials which can be modest and warm at the same time - cardboard, paper and paint. The main theme of Budny's presentation at Art Statements is an idea of an archive. Archive which is understood here as a continuous organic creation: harvest, farming, cultivation, soil. Multilayered boards, compositions made of fragments of older works and paper crumbs constitute a homogenous spatial installation. Its form resembles a structure of agricultural plan cultivation as well as a studio, exposition or open storage - for documents, maps, projects or archives. A vital feature of these works is the illusion of time passing conveyed by their structure and substance - a simulation of long-term processes of piling up of various materials and meanings, their maceration and homogenisation. It is also a metaphor of historical processes, whose physically tangible symbol are archives, places where the documents of real events grow gradually into homogeneous volumes of paper, fossils, from which life slowly evaporates. It is also a certain artist's archive that gathers physical documentation from his experiments and studies. Budny's Archive depicts artistic action as a natural, organic process of accumulation or maturing, similar to the biological process of tree rings growth or piling up of new layers of documents in an archive.