Jerzy Becela, creator of glass tales, is conscious of the fact so valuable today that an art’s chance (who knows maybe the last one) – the chance for importance, for meeting the second person, for emotions or any setting in motion – is rather deduction than addition or multiplication. Therefore reticence. An intentional resignation from possibilities, an accumulation of ways. Hence, peculiar austerity of these works, hence materialness of a glass thing by Jerzy Becela [...]
I was looking at thick matter. Glass like solid substance that is inclined in some places to uncover its own inside, transparent purity, the most affectionate connection with the world. And a minute later or maybe before (surely simultaneously), a sudden matting. A sudden hoarfrost on a pure pupil. I “could see” the roughness of the glass, its “certainty of existence”, united with fragility.
With glass you can spin out tales of a metaphysical message. To construct metaphors. Some works of Jerzy Becela betray his longings fora lively mark that would set the imagination on fire, for a symbol. But even then the artist does not abuse signs. He knows how to “turn down the volume”. And maybe that is why he is a true poet of glass language. An original artist, manifestly independent of fashions and fads. He has his own mysteries, say, technological ones. He has his own, almost always recognizable signs, obsessions, loves. And he also has his silence. Such silence is always a condition for true art.
Please, listen to the glass silence of Jerzy Becela. To its music, quietude – sometimes – (I feel so) – pain.
Read more about creating glass art.
Maciej M. Szczawiński
Jerzy Becela – born in 1947 in Ruda Śląska. He studied at Glass and Ceramics Faculty at Wrocław Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław. In 1974 he got his master’s degree under Professor Ludwik Kiczura. He works as a freelance designer of artistic glass. He also deals with graphic art and painting.
