An experimental photographer and philosopher, Iwona Gladysiewicz’s images create an inspiring impact and clarity of vision. In grand, sweeping, symbolic images, she brings ideas of structure, magnificence and destruction to her audience.
Gladysiewicz’s compositions are most often dominated by strong lines that draw the eye in and through her images. The hard geometric edge is balanced in many photographs by the blur, lending the compositions a sense of movement and dynamism and allowing the camera to ‘paint’ with the light. Simplicity is key to the images – the arresting forms speak for themselves. Through them, Gladysiewicz employs ingenious symbolism to convey a wider concept. The structures echo the wider structures of society, an intricate and rigid cage that frames our lives. Within a system of concepts created by others, individual personality and identity risks erosion and even annihilation. Through her symbolic subjects Gladysiewicz subverts our ordinary assumptions about power and the represented simplicity and introduces us to something deeply rooted in our language and different 'forms of life,' and the sometimes subversive dialog between them.
In my work I refer to symbolic and sometimes mystic aspects of reality - often personal, these are aspects which usually have a standard representation, meaning. Experimenting with photography’s materials and simplicity is the important aesthetic factor in my works. Very important to me is the idea of living in a frame of systems and metasystems of concepts, perceptions. I am continually intrigued by the notion of perceptions, how their subtle reality works and what they are. However, living in the frame of systems of concepts, often artificial - created by other people - which cause mainly destruction, this is the other story...
