Bogusław Deptuła
Fluidity and constancy. On the paintings of Sławomir Ratajski

How do we express our uncertainty about the world around us today? Order and hope left us some time ago. Perhaps it happened on 11 September 2001, or perhaps on 10 April 2010? Far more likely, it happened on a random day, unnamed, unknown and undiscovered. There may be an infinite number of theories and proposals, but will any of them gain prevalence? It does not matter.
We live in times of fluidity. It was decreed not only by Zygmunt Bauman, but by popular sentiment. Commumteste......
How do we reveal this lack of certainty, this lack of stability or fluidity in art? We can introduce coincidence into painterly endeavours. This coincidence is the use, nomen omen, of fluid paint, without the help of brushes, relying solely on intuition and gravity – almost. Coincidence has to be helped along, but it also manages and gains its own foothold in many paintings created recently by Sławomir Ratajski.
He is an experienced artist, having started in the early 1980s, at a time when expression was dominant, and of which he has become one of the best representatives.
Constancy in this artistic, aesthetic, painterly and ontological project is ensured by the person of the author. The paintings may change – the colours of the paint, the formats of the images, the substrates and pigments used – but he remains the constant of all these actions and explorations. He is the beginning and the fulfilment; and we cannot argue with this fact, but we can watch the flow of fluidity and remain in amazement at its richness.

Sławomir Ratajski - Born 1955 in Warsaw. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1979 with a diploma with distinction from the Faculty of Graphic Arts, under Prof. Halina Chrostowska and Prof. Jerzy Tchórzewski. In 1987–2009, he worked at the Faculty of Graphic Arts of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
In 1987–1997, he was Prof. Jerzy Tchórzewski's assistant and collaborator.
In 2011, he received the title of professor of visual arts.
Until 2009, he ran the Painting and Drawing studio at the Faculty of Graphic Arts of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
Currently, he runs the intermedia Artistic Concept Creation Studio and is head of the General Art Department at the Faculty of Media Art of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.