Realising how difficult is to create something modern, blended with a Surrealist touch from the thirties, bringing something weird from horror, goth & giallo of Seventies, we admitted that the aesthetics of Karolina Graczyk Artwork makes this mix to look so easy. The fact is that she makes this, with her astonishing fantasy, and detailed concentration on the physiognomy of each different image. Thanks Karolina for this!
1. A fusion of Giallo, Psychedelics, Erotic Surrealism and Goth fiction in one. Which is the common thread that connects all these inside your mind?
For me it’s where outsider art and pop entertainment meet.
2. Let us watch for a while what is going on in your thoughts during your artwork, how do you feel?
Sometimes I build the piece around one specific element that caught my attention; most of the time it’s a free flow. I get lost in the process easily and let my gut guide me. At the end collage will always surprise you. It feels like it’s creating itself.Collecting digitally scanned vintage graphics and matching them in my mind plays a huge part in the process. I’m a gatherer.
Surrounding myself with old things makes me thrive. From what I see, a lot of collage artists emphasize the stiches in their artworks, the clashing between elements. What I personally find the most interesting is the blending, the camouflage aspect of it.
My collages often get mistaken for paintings. Usually I don’t interact with colors too much – I let the art of the past shine with its natural light. The graphics used in a collage may come from different time periods but suddenly they seem made for each other, and that’s where the magic happens.
3. Let’s speak about exploitation films, Jean Rollin, Visual arts and your addiction with them.
Films were actually my first serious passion (starting from Czech New Wave, through depressive slow cinema, horror and exploitation films), so for a long time I thought of myself primarily as a film critic, well, a novice at least. There’s something extremely appealing in choosing the right words to describe abstract matters. I think of it as a constant battle between restraint and decadence – both stylistically and thematically.
It all fluctuates in time butI’m mostly drawn to old films that were cheaply made and usually sensational. Pulp aesthetics and sensibility – in cinema, books, magazines – is fun to experience with a modern eye.Sometimes it’s one scene or just the texture of an old tape that takes hold of me. I like lesbian vampires, drugsploitation flicks, Eurohorror, Giallo…
I could talk for quite some time about exploitation films made by women (likes of Stephanie Rothman and Barbara Peeters) and Jean Rollin’s beautiful, strange dreamscapes. His depiction of girls and women was especially fascinating to me;
I dedicated my BA thesis to their presence and the way we as viewers look upon them. They’re escapees, always forgetting things they did a moment ago, always searching for something. I very much relate to that.
Then, of course, there’s Something Weird(1967), a micro-budget film by Herschell Gordon Lewis that inspired the name of my Instagram account (@something.weird.collage). I think it perfectly encapsulates this feeling of creative chaos bursting through technical errors and a complete lack of restraint, something that just sits right with me.
4. Share with us your music, philosophical or literature influences on your work.
My philosophical approach is rather simple – live deliciously, accept the absurd, absorb everything in your own pace. Easier said than done.I like Leonora Carrington’s surreal and dry wit, the precision of Zadie Smith’s, Joan Didion’s and Amelie Nothomb’swriting, Leonor Fini’s performance of life, Roland Topor’s humour.
On the other hand, I find solace in lush styles, so I recurrently come back to Bruno Schulz, Bolesław Leśmian andStefanGrabiński (the latter of three often being compared to H.P. Lovecraft).
Everything I enjoy merge and pour in the things I do, some way or another.
5. Have you got a project idea that you say would be the dream of your life to make it happen?
I plan to do a project inspired by devil Boruta, one of the most prominent diabolical figures in Polish folklore(and a patron of my hometown).I’ve already done the research part but I had to put this on hold. Hopefully I’ll get back to it, sooner or later. But putting design/collage aside, I’m more and more drawn to videoessays. They’re concise, accesible, attractive to the eyeand I think there’s still a gap to fill when it comes to people talking of genre/exploitation cinema.
6. In which movie you would die to be part of the casting and why?
Besides strolling in a robe next to Mireille Dargent and Marie-Pierre Castel, I’d go for contemporaries: Bertrand Mandico(The Wild Boys) and Anna Biller (The Love Witch/Viva). Both delve into the excess (their sets and approach to filmmaking in general are truly impressive), both have interesting things to say about femininity, queerness and the nature of power.
7. Give me a brief about your art journalism synergies, your criticism point of view or what you love mostly highlight and criticize in the Modern Art.
Since 2020, the early months of the pandemic, I’ve been co-running a feminist online film magazine called Final Girls, dedicated mostly to genre cinema. I’m glad it’s still on (despite all of us editors, past and present, having a full-time job and other personal projects). My first collage illustrations were made for Final Girls, I got my first commissions through it, and my writing skills expanded, thanks to lots and lots of editing and proofreading – it’s been quite interesting four years, basically.
As to Modern Art, I definitely fit in with its playings with gender, sexuality, the erotic. When it comes to feminism, a lot has changed for the better since I was a teen; it has entered mainstream full speed and art reflects that, I think. Same goes with other themes present in my collages as well: the retromania, the duality (nothing’s the way it appears to be), the love for kitsch and the ‘low-brow’.For the downsides –I’m not a fan of how this industry works in a current climate (and I’m still pretty much a freshman). It requires a lot.
8. Which is the next step and your art plans for the near future?
I’d like to focus more on promoting my art locally. Beside that, just continuing to do what I’m doing:hopefully becoming better at juggling visual arts, writing and life,nurturing old and new passionsand resting like there’s no tomorrow.
