CARAVAGGIO PROJECT

A R T U R S O C H A N P H O T O G R A P H Y

Caravaggio - The Art of Dying, Birth and Enduring by Artur Sochan

Caravaggio - The Art of Dying, Birth and Enduring is the latest artistic challenge of the Polish master of chiaroscuro, Artur Sochan. This excellent photographer combines photography with film and painting, thus searching for new spaces in the visual and audiovisual arts. This time he reaches back to his great fascination with Renaissance and Baroque painting.

Caravaggio - The Art of Dying, Birth and Enduring is a series of 12 large-format photographic paintings inspired by the work of the Italian painter Michaelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, active in Rome, Naples and Malta in the years 1593-1610. This painter, considered a reformer of painting at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, renounced the idealization of the body human in favor of realism, which he emphasized with the use of sharp chiaroscuro. The artist combined philosophical and psychological content with a characteristic form. He created mostly religious paintings inspired by Christianity. His style became a model for baroque painting.

However, each of the works presented by Artur Sochan recreates a scene from a selected canvas by the brilliant Italian, with the difference that this time the individual characters are played by contemporary women - Polish women, residents of Warsaw, and more precisely its historical district called Praga. The author tries to answer the question whether old, great art, despite the passage of time, still carries its emotional and iconographic message and whether it perpetuates itself in the consciousness of modern man.

Artur Sochan as an artist is characterized by exceptional sensitivity and a broad vision. His works are characterized by omnipresent transcendence. They are imbued with humanism and questions about the condition of humanity, both in individual and social aspects.

When interacting with Artur Sochan's works, we balance on the verge of life and death. He sees his models in the works included in this exhibition in these categories. The moment in which they are presented seems to be the most important moment in their lives, as if the future, or even the next minute of their lives, would not exist. His creations pulsate with the life of this great moment, and the recipients have the impression that they come from another dimension. They live but outside of time and space.

Artur Sochan is an artist who does not escape into the simplicity of modern forms, but takes on the responsibility for a full dialogue with the viewer using advanced artistic means for today's times. It provokes us to ask difficult questions. He puts forward an interesting thesis that despite historical, technological and social changes, man does not really change. He will always ask himself the questions "Who am I and where am I going?" "Does the fact that I live in the 21st century make me better and more aware than my ancestors and predecessors, or is it the other way around?"

Film and Design by Artur Sochan

PHOTOGRAPHY SCRIPT DIRECTION CINEMATOGRAPHER EDITING

Agnieszka Kaczyńska

COSTUMES AND SCENOGRAPHY

Maja Stosio

MAKEUP ARTIST

Paul Gavlic

MUSIC

Magdalena Gavlic

VOCAL

Voices

Text by Artur Sochan