"Mappa Mundi" dr hab. Małgorzata Wrześniak

DOROTA BERGER paints the world; she paints it with an exceptional attention to the smallest detail, totally engrossed and in silence devoting her time to the birds, hares, trees or even to the single leaves. With a gentle brush stroke she fondles them for long hours thus “building” her own picture of the nature. This, however, isn´t a simple reproduction of the nature, a realistic capturing of some moment in the woods or in the field.  It isn´t just a recalled sight either, or a hare seen fleetingly only. Dorota´s paintings are a synthesis of the world, a picture of an ideal universum filled with harmony where there are ideal trees growing, ideal hares running while ideal birds are drinking water from the Spring. Everything is in order and has its own place in this world, however everything exists beyond time, somewhat embedded in the eternity – it continues to last, it simply is there. Dorota´s paintings express captivation, enchantment of the world in which the Spirit manifests itself. 

 

Imitating nature, showing great respect for even the smallest of the creatures, getting inspiration from the medieval picture of universum, using bird´s-eye view frequently, all these make the viewer see in these creation icons something more than that, something beyond, enable him to see the message being much deeper than just a colourful picture of the perceived reality. Per visibilia ad invisibilia – the words expressed by Pseudo-Dionysius nearly 1500 years ago sanctioning the existence of sacral art still remain valid for Dorota Berger´s work today. For her paintings always feature two perspectives. Top-down perspective and bottom-up one. A Creator´s perspective and a perspective of a creature. The former is a perspective of God the Creator and of the Guardian God who gave life to everything which this life is now being protected by his Providence. It is a perspective of the “God that Exists” – in the reality there and who affects the reality here, filling it with his Light and Beauty. The latter is a perspective of a creature that wants to immerse, participate in that Beauty and Light. Here we can see an orchard, and the trees there. However, this is not an ordinary orchard. In the background the stairs can be seen, they vanish into the crowns of the trees. Maybe they lead to a place at the top floor of some building whose fragment was painted here, or maybe they are stairs leading to heaven? To another reality which can only be entered by taking a narrow road, perfecting your inner self step by step? The reality of Light imagined here in the golden background to the Orchard. One may say that Dorota Berger continues to follow a medieval vision of the world whose aesthetics expressed in the words consonantia et claritas is achieved using modern and much more subtle means. Supernatural Spirit does not manifest itself directly, in an obvious way as it can be seen in the art of the Middle Ages. Instead it is a quiet and soft Epiphany, in the sound of a gentle whisper.

 

Małgorzata Wrześniak dr hab., PhD

curator of the exhibition "Mappa Mundi", Galeria Korekta 2015