Andrzej Maciejewski | Ephemeral Fields

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Andrzej Maciejewski, “Potatoes, bread, sour cream, wristwatch,” 2021

archival inkjet prints (courtesy of the artist)

Opening Reception for Members and Guests: Friday January 10^th, 7 -10 pm.

Ephemeral Fields is a suite of 18 autobiographical photographic diptychs by Andrzej Maciejewski – a nationally and internationally renowned Polish-born Canadian photographer and author – that explores the intersections of modern science, philosophy, and mental health.

Andrzej Maciejewski’s father, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, died by suicide exactly 50 years ago, and left 23 small notebooks with reflections on his life. Five of these books are entirely devoted to “electromagnetic events” and are meticulously transcribed textbooks that include many precise technical drawings. After so many years of missing him, Andrzej started to have an impression that his interest in science was driven by desperate and futile attempts to find a scientific explanation for his delusions and feeling of being manipulated.

Life was not much more but combination of electromagnetic events—short, chaotic, unique—the product of unpredictable and mysterious possibilities of random events.

On the left-hand side of the diptychs are photographs of pencil drawings and notes by Andrzej’s father. They are captured with the harsh lighting and deep shadows of experimental 1920s Russian filmmakers (with a nod to Alexander Rodchenko and August Sander, among others), and each involves an element of ephemeral movement.

The images on the right-hand side of the diptychs exist in counterpoint and are extracted from mundane everyday objects and occurrences that directly relate to specific events of the life of Andrzej’s father —the mixing of a freshly boiled soup, the fanning out of his father’s playing cards—occurrences that are rarely noticed or observed. These small, ephemeral moments are unrepeatable, capturing a moment that can only ever happen once. Shown at the microscopic scale, these objects transform into something symbolic, unique and ephemeral. These images are empirical “proof” of theories explained by the numbers, equations, and diagrams on the left side image.