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Just like the indigenous people around the world, from whom they learned that it was unnecessary to copy realistic scenes to
express powerful images, they started to produce great pieces of art with broad brushstrokes, bright colors and new techniques like Seurat’s pointillism.
Wolfgang Niesielski’s cartoons are like surrealism on a humorous level. They raise your consciousness and cause you to question the way
things are.
Niesielski shakes up your perception of what is and what is not. But is this just nonsense? Surrealists like Dali and Magritte, by seemingly letting their subconscious take over also puzzled and fascinated the viewers with their implausible and illogical renderings.
Niesielski uses his art to heave us into a totally different realm. Just as Magritte portrayed bowler hat-wearing men rain from the sky,
Niesielski has medium-sized Bavarians drop down but then he goes one step further, he uses humor and his unorthodox cartoon style of charming ugliness. Like Roy Lichtenstein, he uses comics or cartoons
but also a brain teasing narrative to confuse us further. Why does Gail stick to the camel’s side? Why not on its back? Are there really “L-shaped people”? The artwork is different from today’s cartoons, most
of which tend to have a certain cuteness, a “Disney” effect. Niesielski breaks away from that. He ties your mind in knots. His cartoons are described by McKenzie Weekly News as having “a certain ugly charm”. He uses humor to change paradigm in the art world.
Which leads me to my granny and her artistically challenged cat and today’s state of the art. “Nothing new under the sun. Same ol’, same
ol,” she would have said. That is why paintings of the early 20th century seem so modern. Nobody has really come up with anything new and exiting lately. We have arrived at a point now where the only way to break convention is to shock, and I don’t think the public is buying it.
Niesielski achieves where many have failed. By forcing us to look at the world up-side down – does South America belong on top of
the map or on the bottom – he makes us think, while we laugh. Perhaps this really could be the beginning of a breakthrough in art. A New art movement.
Ebele Ene
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