Interview: Roman Kujawa
Luca Curci talks with Roman Kujawa during MIXING IDENTITIES, second appointment of CANVAS INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR 2024, at Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello in Venice.

Roman Kujawa was born on February 28th, 1954, in Poland. Right after finishing his Master’s Degree studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland he left in 1981 to study in New York, USA. There he finished his Master’s Degree at the School of Visual Art. Since 1981 Roman Kujawa has participated in numerous art exhibitions in the USA and all over the world. He has spent most of my life in New York (over 40 years) and for the last three years, he has lived in Florida, USA and also spent part of the year in Krakow, Poland, where he has a studio. He also has a second studio in Niagara Falls, NY.

Luca Curci – What is the trigger that makes you paint?  
Roman Kujawa – This is a serious and mysterious question. No one knows the reason for it, but I will try to answer it to some extent and within my capabilities. Two opposing categories definitely play a diametrical role here: emotions and intellect. The main reason that makes me create is the desire to communicate with another person, not verbally, but visually and intellectually. This is certainly my selective response to the reality surrounding me, which is constantly changing. My greatest interest is how a person conveys information to another person, currently and in the past.

LC – Which artists have somehow influenced your work? 
RK – A. Ursula von Rydingsvard, American The attractiveness of her sculptures is due to the structure, distinctiveness and uniqueness of individual elements.
B. Jonathan Borovsky, American. For his conceptual art, monumental realizations in public space, and especially for one work when he connected photos of people murdered during the war with electric cables to burning light bulbs, thereby somehow activating the memory of these human beings. C. Roman Opałka, French-Polish An artist who followed one concept, or idea for most of his life, leading art to the registration of his own existence. Writing numbers in calligraphy on his paintings, he recorded every day, like a seismograph, the frequency of vibrations of his own existence.

LC – Do you use art to express something in particular? Is it your medium of expression?
RK – I do not use art to express something in particular, rather through visual form, I want to move the viewer intellectually but not emotionally. I want to calm the viewer by sending them an intellectual signal. Art is just one of many means of expression that define me.

LC – How do you feel when you see your work finished?
RK – When my work is finished I feel calm and fulfilled. I always wonder if what I have finished is convincing enough to reach and move the recipient. Sometimes I come back reducing some elements or adding others. My work is never finished completely, there is always room for change. In my works, the creative process itself is a goal in itself. It causes a change in my mental state, putting me in a state of “chanting”

LC – Are your works focused on a specific theme?
RK –My works represent a conceptual idea: namely the idea of ​​CIRCUIT. This is a very broad topic. Everything that surrounds us is connected to each other in some way. Connections of individual elements of our reality can also be a form of information flow. We as humanity will never fully know anything, therefore using the visual-intellectual language of art, we can reach areas where the intellect ends and we enter something completely incomprehensible. Art then acts as an opening door that allows us to reach where nothing we know and understand functions.

LC – Do you agree with our vision of art and what do you think about the theme of the exhibition?
RK – Searching for and presenting different artistic personalities under the binding theme “Canvas” is an interesting form of organizing an exhibition. Canvas is associated with classical art but also with contemporary art. One does not exclude the other. There were times in contemporary art when painting on canvas was ironically called “smearing a rag”. Then came the times when artists returned to painting on canvas. Currently, this form of creative expression is still relevant.

LC – In which way is the artwork presented in our exhibition connected with the exhibition’s theme?
RK –The exhibition shows the diversity of identities, multi-vector creative searches, cultural diversity, the richness of colors and themes, and all of this is based on the theme “Canvas” which somehow unites the diversity into one organism. All of this is exhibited in the context of old art through the exhibition in the Renaissance Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello. Through this procedure, we can experience the relations between one world and another. I think that the exhibition meets this criterion.