Art is the oldest and the most deeply influencing element of human understanding and cognition. It has appeared already in Paleolithic times as an important factor in the formation of culture, and it remained so to this day in the conviction of open and
self-conscious minds, despite occasional artistic criticism and poor philosophy of its alleged exhaustion.
Valuable works of art invariably attract human attention, they are still valid and seems timeless. Their viability draws strength from the ability to affect all levels of human sensitivity and from the potential to present in a visual way what is not obvious, revealing new ideas, emerging questions, problems, and unrevealed yet areas of the world. This attribute of art was accurately summed up by Hans-Georg Gadamer who writes: “poetry and all that is unnamed, all that poetry evokes in us, describes a wider circle, in which the effort of cognition has yet to find its place”.
In this sense of the art space function the sculptures of Bartosz Banasik, young graduate of Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, who is struggling with difficult to explain and unambiguously define problems of human existence, the sense of being and passing away, the border of self identity and smooth transition between the dreaming and hard reality. Banasik understands and appreciates the importance of the poetic metaphor. His sculptures, although deeply rooted in the realistic convention, are thoroughly imbued with an aura of “poetic indefiniteness” and refer to the semantic depth that appears in evident looks, representations and suggested imaginations.
The figure of an old man in the composition entitled “The Barrier” with a gesture of resignation and tiredness, evokes reflection on the closed horizon of human being, limited nature of existence and also the inalienable dignity of the human subject. Similar thoughts arouse sculptural composition “The Breath” composed of fragments of the human body embedded in the nameless indeterminacy background. In this sculpture, we are confronted with the dialectics of the physical concrete and metaphysical context, nameless but as real as the physical concrete.
The Barrier 
The Breath
A more complex and extensive structure of meanings can be found in the sculpture realized as part of Bartosz Banasik’s diploma thesis at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts. The sculptural composition entitled “Self-portraits” is, in fact, an artistic report on the state of the Author’s awareness of himself. It’s a peculiar report because instead of his own image we have a constellation of human faces, the images of people appearing in the horizon of consciousness of the Author, rotating around some invisible axis that is a symbol of the mental center.
Self-portraits 
Self-portraits
The statue emanating a special poetic mood is the figure of “The Dreamer”, whose sculptural form has been perfectly integrated with the character of the artistic message. The realistic figure of “The Dreamer” was subtly stretched in the horizontal plane, what corresponds with the actual state of knowledge about the nature of dreams, as a one-track narrative composed of sequences of images and events without the possibility of referring to them from the level of meta-reflection. This sculpture is now in the permanent collection of the Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts, whose resources include old and modern works created by professors and outstanding students.
Bartosz Banasik as a young artist shaping his own artistic individuality is known for his honesty, both in interpersonal relations with other people, especially other artists, as well as with his own challenges and goals he undertakes. In practice, this means compliance of thinking and action, a close relationship of creative activity with the main principle of a recognized worldview, according to which “we should first sort our own hearts before we fix the hearts of others”. In his opinion, the contemporary artist has the ability and great power to influence other people, he can “become a shaman by creating works, if he is properly prepared and has knowledge about issues that are a form of inspiration for him” [quotations from the text of the diploma dissertation]. In my opinion, however, we should not worry about the state of contemporary art, until the shaping of its identity is in the hands of gifted and honest artists
Prof. Franciszek Chmielowski
Head of the Inter-faculty Cathedral
of History and Theory of Art
of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow.