"... It may be a paradox – but the very fact that Marion Wolczuk's painting has not fully opened for me – wins me for these paintings, just as one becomes interested in a mysterious shape observed in a strange, darkened room and cannot be sure if it's a man, or a mirror with one's own obscure reflection.
The present time has mode us used to unambiguous images: a blot of spilt paint, a black square against white background, a leader in socialist labour, tangled guts pulled out of a body which had been subjected to sophisticated sadomasochist acts – these are unambiguous "worlds". One never happens to see, as in the pre-21st century painting, images containing an almost painful mystery of unity of a marvellous painting technique, depth of emotion, wholeness of inseparable ports of the painting's issues – where both form and colour and light and space and unique composition are present, while the form is not only two triangles and a circle, but a beautiful hand and expressive, damp eye, while the colour is also a splendid skin complexion with blood circulating underneath, the light is also flashes of silver threads in a princess's skirt, while the space is the presence of the air and the plane of the painting at the same time, while the composition is balancing mutual relationships and elements, while all those elements finally create the portrait of an infant princess. Thus it may be right that Wolczuk's paintings cannot be perceived in a second, like a signal – one glance and all is clear: a blot, a leader, a square, etc. I also think that the stubbornness with which Marian Wolczuk paints, to be honest, still the same image or a sum of the same problems (which sounds prettier) sheds positive light on the character of his painting, too.
I believe that there are a lot of development possibilities waiting for him, which may come true owing not only to his talent but this very stubbornness. I do not consider the drawings separately, they seem to me closely connected with the painting concept."
Prof. Jan Szancenbach
"Marian Wolczuk has always painted a lot, really a lot. The paintings have been created in cycles, inspired by formal problems bothering the artist. Such inspiration leads to a number of solutions, which resulted one from another, complemented and got tangled with each other. The very big cycles of paintings – complemented by graphic art or drawing – are the result of a very systematic, absorbing work. Having observed Marian Wolczuk for many years I may risk the suggestion that painting, particularly in the periods of intensive work became the only important reality that matters to him, as opposed to the often lukewarm and pale real life reality. The colour grows in meaning, it adds not only to the richness of the image; it becomes symbolic, a means of expression."
Prof. Stanisław Rodziński
"That all these transformations, which Wolczuk's painting is subject they result from his search and experience is also proved by the fact that the paintings are usually grouped in cycles. I like such method of artistic activity, I endow it with trust in advance. I can see in it searching for better and better, fuller and fuller solutions, a certain artistic consciousness and coherence.
There is awareness of the fact that one never stops to be an artist, when he encloses his experience in one work, but also when he searches, attempts, examines."
Magdalena Hniedziewicz
"Figures, pulled off heads, hands, a tangle of bodies, faces, plane and relief, organic and geo-metrical elements. Everything stopped in the moment or striving to the centre or to the edge of the composition, shown in the moment of change of the supporting point. Yet the image does not resemble a still movie frame, the plane of paper or canvas is not only a passive screen. On the contrary – it imposes its rights, determines the form and the way of presentation.
Influenced by these rights the former, expressive images created two, three years ago, during Marian Wolczuk's debut, have undergone a fast metamorphosis – they have changed into two- dimensional signs – symbols into ideograms. They no longer express, they convey the meaning."
Mariusz Hermansdrofer
"Marian Wolczuk's works have undoubtedly grown out of the tradition of certain post-war trends of geometrical abstraction and so-called allusive abstraction, in which the selection and composition of formal means determines the contents of a work of art. The vocabulary of formal means used by the author is rather modest – consciously modest, matching his sensitive, and at the same time enormously precise, personality."
Ariadna Sarnowicz
"This conscious and consistent colorist is the heir to a long-standing tradition of the Wrocław School of Fine Arts, where the foundations for this artistic movement were laid by the first pioneering painting instructors, active from the outset of the school’s post-World War II revival. Wołczuk works in series; he is renowned for his immense diligence and near-daily "addiction" to painting: he lives for his passion and creates almost endless sequences of melodic color combinations; sometimes in harmonious fields of complementary hues, other times in contrasting proposals; yet, their compositions (whether warm or cool) always interact seamlessly, almost imposing a visual impression akin to musical scores. Wołczuk plays with his "études," "impressions," "atmospheres..." practically every day. This is how he hears himself... and perhaps, one might say, how his paintings could be "listened to"? This "polyphony" is undoubtedly a hallmark of his entire artistic oeuvre."
Andrzej Saj
