Walerian Borowczyk, the Orchestrating Angel
Whether he takes the brush, the chisel, the pen, the
still camera or the movie camera, whether he's recording the real movement
of actors or creating an illusory movement image by image, Walerian Borowczyk,
artist of multiple talents, is building a unique body of work. Great manipulator
of matter, he not only transforms it into images with the power to impart
emotions by his hand, but he is also able to draw from that material the expression
of its deepest reality while keeping its personality intact. He shapes each
substance with a respect for its life essence. He reveals the mysterious autonomy
therein and controls its disturbing fertility.
The sculptures of Borowczyk harbor a latent energy hidden away within their
woody substance, and imperceptible at first glance.
Silence will reveal nothing to the hurried visitor. Nor even to one
who lingers. Unless his understanding an proficiency with wood leads him to
guess its secret: the immobility of Silence is not only a facade; when
the air becomes drier, the wood deploys its wings in an inaudible exhalation.
One confidently approaches La Porte Dévergonde, a large, slightly
warped plank of aged wood. One can't help caressing its alluring smoothness
and its brown skin. One explores the face of the work without even suspecting
the existence of its other side. A finger lingers on a slight out growth.
The caress becomes insistent and suddenly triggers a cascade of enraged hammers
which summon us back into the order of things.
L'Orgue Rouge invites you to play, but its keyboard has only one key
and you can draw nothing from the instrument except what it wants to give
you.
The machines of Boro derive from the creative genius of Leonardo da Vinci,
but they are perfectly useless. They seem to exist only for themselves. Nevertheless
they invite us to dialogue. They respond to our prompting with a dash of humor,
a flip-flop of mood, a clanking or a crashing of startled matter.
Borowczyk the film maker manipulates light and orchestrates our gaze. He shows
a reality one would like to know nothing about or pretends to know nothing
about because it upsets what we take for granted. His angels have the terrifying
innocence of executioners, and his demons overflow with humanity. The objects
he has chosen and, often, constructed himself to meet the needs of his films,
are actors in their own right. When one listens to him talk about it, one
discovers that each one of them has played an actual role. They provided to
response to Michel Simon, Ligia Branice or Pierre Brasseur... Walerian Borowczyk
directs the actors made of wood or paper as he directs actors of flesh and
blood. He observes, listens, surprises and captures some of their intimate
secrets present everywhere at the core so as to project them onto our screens.
To Borowczyk, film animation is not a vocation. It is a technique which enables
him to manipulate time. For our vision of the world is a question of scale and
time. Handicapped by the hurried rhythm of an all-too ephemeral existence, we
are now more adept in our perception of the life of a stone than of some object
we ourselves have created. Through illusion, Borowczyk reveals to us a face
of reality hidden in the apparent immobility and impassivity of things. An unfamiliar
detail, a colored reflection barely noticeable, the unexpected accent of a sound,
a rhythm, and there we are, absorbed in the universe of Boro. One looks for
reference points, one would like to take step back, because all of a sudden
the familiar becomes disturbing. This wall, which was to us nothing but a dirty
wall, now thrusts toward our eye dazzling and at times sublime bolts of lightning.
Boro unveils to us a quivering essence. Along with his illustrious predecessor,
Guy de Maupassant, he shatters the frontiers which we erect in order to decree
on one side the world of the living and on the other world of objects.
Walerian Borowczyk expresses through poetry that which contemporary scientists
discover in the course of their research: there are no fundamental differences
among the multiple forms of matter; there are only varying degrees of complexity
in the arrangement of atoms.
-Maurice CORBET
Annecy Museum Curator
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