_„… every map displays a specific world; so does it display the world as it is, as it was, as it will be, as it could be, or as it should be?“_ (Christian Jacob: Towards a Cultural History of Cartography, 1996)

  
One of the peculiar phenomena of European science, literature and art since the 19th century is the persistent presence of figures who work as field surveyors and who optionally measure or redesign the topography of real and fictional spaces. Mapping becomes an external reality and archival device for objective knowledge and reality. _„Maps are statements about the physical nature of the world, its shape and its limits. They display beliefs or concepts about the nature of the world and how it can be depicted.“_ (Christian Jacob) The works of this series are playing with several respective ideas of the predictability, representability and controllability (or uncontrollability) of the world. 

The so called „fractal landscapes“ are based on a computer generated algorithm of surfaces that imitates the appearance of a natural terrain, which was first introduced by Benoit Mandelbrot in the late 70´s. The technique of carving in these woodcuts also correspond with the so called Perlin Noise, a type of gradient noise used in computer graphics. 

  

Landvermesser

With his latest works, created over the past two years, Osnowski takes a new approach to landscape, both thematically and stylistically, venturing into uncharted territory in the field of printmaking. In these pieces, Osnowski turns to an abstract theoretical concept of landscape: Arcadia. In crafting his large-scale woodcuts, he employs fractal geometry to create a digitally-inspired, mechanically amorphous hybrid landscape. These representations, grounded in complex fractal patterns, seem to explore the convergence of technology and spirituality, aiming to reveal the inherent order of an “Arcadian” landscape, where the organic and mechanical, the macrocosmic and microcosmic, merge and intertwine.

Through the repeated juxtaposition and overlapping of prismatic variations and perspectives of interacting color fields, Osnowski appears to investigate the origin of fragmentation. What we see are fragments of a previously larger whole, yet these very gaps—often understood in classical modernism as “eloquent voids”—reveal deeper layers beneath. This leads to a strikingly colorful and poetically vibrant depiction in the works. The carefully chosen color contrasts between different layers create the illusion of optical space, and the levels seem to float, producing a sense of visual depth.

The repeated printing and overprinting of the image also alters its relationship to time. There is no clear sequence, no causal “this happened because of that.” Instead, clusters emerge: bundles of actions that occurred sequentially but are all visible simultaneously. This very specific temporality—the intertwining of the past, present, and potential future—fascinates the artist. Like a palimpsest, Osnowski layers one image upon another without fully erasing the previous, a process that can also be understood as a metaphor for perception.

Laniakea

Nebula 2

Kaneko

With his latest works, created over the past two years, the artist takes a new approach to landscape, both thematically and stylistically, venturing into uncharted territory in the field of printmaking. In these pieces, Osnowski turns to an abstract theoretical concept of landscape: Arcadia. In crafting his large-scale woodcuts, he employs fractal geometry to create a digitally-inspired, mechanically amorphous hybrid landscape. These representations, grounded in complex fractal patterns, seem to explore the convergence of technology and spirituality, aiming to reveal the inherent order of an “Arcadian” landscape, where the organic and mechanical, the macrocosmic and microcosmic, merge and intertwine.

Through the repeated juxtaposition and overlapping of prismatic variations and perspectives of interacting color fields, Osnowski appears to investigate the origin of fragmentation. What we see are fragments of a previously larger whole, yet these very gaps—often understood in classical modernism as “eloquent voids”—reveal deeper layers beneath. This leads to a strikingly colorful and poetically vibrant depiction in the works. The carefully chosen color contrasts between different layers create the illusion of optical space, and the levels seem to float, producing a sense of visual depth.

The repeated printing and overprinting of the image also alters its relationship to time. There is no clear sequence, no causal “this happened because of that.” Instead, clusters emerge: bundles of actions that occurred sequentially but are all visible simultaneously. This very specific temporality—the intertwining of the past, present, and potential future—fascinates the artist. Like a palimpsest, Osnowski layers one image upon another without fully erasing the previous, a process that can also be understood as a metaphor for perception.

Henon

The title of this series „Fractus“ refers to the so called „chaos theory“, a mathematical term, closely linked to fractal structures. Almost on the border between something and nothing, these experimental abstract prints explore the very nature of what constitutes an image. The swaths of color and forms, combined with the remains of digital like traces of interferences are record of the physical gestures involved in the construction. The technique of overlapping prints of different woodblocks creates new correlations, elements of deconstruction and reconstruction alternate constantly or even shift places such as if it would be a section of a large continental drift. These works look as though they could be some strange scientific evidence of natural processes.

Fractus

The title of this series „Cantor“ refers to the so called „chaos theory“, a mathematical term, closely linked to fractal structures. Almost on the border between something and nothing, these experimental abstract prints explore the very nature of what constitutes an image. The swaths of color and forms, combined with the remains of digital like traces of interferences are record of the physical gestures involved in the construction. The technique of overlapping prints of different woodblocks creates new correlations, elements of deconstruction and reconstruction alternate constantly or even shift places such as if it would be a section of a large continental drift. These works look as though they could be some strange scientific evidence of natural processes.

  

Cantor

In this series, Osnowski attempts to evoke fractal artificiality through a new form of abstraction and thus question our relationship to immateriality and space. Some of these works might appear like a psychedelic trip through extra-planetary landscapes. He aims to represent the motifs that may not necessarily reflect reality, but rather transform them into a fictitious framework of thoughts about time and space. His intention is to blur the boundaries between rationality and emotions, simultaneously weaving them into a grid of geometric harmony or chaos, thus creating a constant interplay between figurativeness and abstraction.

  

Cloud

The serie of large-scale monochromatic woodcuts shows images of an empty Seascape on the west coast of Europe, in southern Portugal. This landscape is characterized by its broad boundlessness.

The composition of each image always follows the same strict classical principle: The Focus goes out to the sea to an endless horizon in the distance that divides the image exactly in the middle. The upper half of the picture portrays a cloudy sky during the twilight of the dawning night. In the lower half the ocean and waves break in endless repetition on the shore and blur the border between land and sea.

  
The endlessness of the sky and sea provoke us to consider our own limitations: The horizon is a limit we can never reach, that constantly suggests to us its distance. At the same time these images are also projections of our dreams and aspirations, suggested to unparalleled distance and depth. But it is only the glimpse into the distance that truly opens up our view to the inside, to the width and boundlessness within ourselves. Due to their delimitation, these images also refer to the painting „The Monk by the Sea“ by Caspar David Friedrich, on which Heinrich von Kleist remarked: „…since in its monotony and boundlessness it has no foreground except the frame, when viewing it, it is as if one’s eyelids had been cut away.”.

  
The original digital photographs are transformed during a month-long time-consuming handwork into a digital barcode which will be carved into wood to be finally printed by hand on paper. The use of any mechanical equipment is deliberately avoided. The traditional analog printing of images and the associated loss of information compared to the original photographs, exerts a peculiar tension by underlining the contrast between the digital immaterial image and the handmade physical print.

Entre 4

_„… every map displays a specific world; so does it display the world as it is, as it was, as it will be, as it could be, or as it should be?“_ (Christian Jacob: Towards a Cultural History of Cartography, 1996)

One of the peculiar phenomena of European science, literature and art since the 19th century is the persistent presence of figures who work as field surveyors and who optionally measure or redesign the topography of real and fictional spaces. Mapping becomes an external reality and archival device for objective knowledge and reality. _„Maps are statements about the physical nature of the world, its shape and its limits. They display beliefs or concepts about the nature of the world and how it can be depicted.“_ (Christian Jacob) The works of this series are playing with several respective ideas of the predictability, representability and controllability (or uncontrollability) of the world. 

The so called „fractal landscapes“ are based on a computer generated algorithm of surfaces that imitates the appearance of a natural terrain, which was first introduced by Benoit Mandelbrot in the late 70´s. The technique of carving in these woodcuts also correspond with the so called Perlin Noise, a type of gradient noise used in computer graphics.

Anstieg

_„… every map displays a specific world; so does it display the world as it is, as it was, as it will be, as it could be, or as it should be?“_ (Christian Jacob: Towards a Cultural History of Cartography, 1996)

One of the peculiar phenomena of European science, literature and art since the 19th century is the persistent presence of figures who work as field surveyors and who optionally measure or redesign the topography of real and fictional spaces. Mapping becomes an external reality and archival device for objective knowledge and reality. _„Maps are statements about the physical nature of the world, its shape and its limits. They display beliefs or concepts about the nature of the world and how it can be depicted.“_ (Christian Jacob)

The works of this series are playing with several respective ideas of the predictability, representability and controllability (or uncontrollability) of the world. 

Anhöhe / Hypsos

The series shows a terrain that is dissolving, structures that are disintegrating, a place that is disappearing and is barely recognisable as a landscape. At the same time, the figurative representation recedes, dissolves, passes over into the abstract, as if the decay had to be documented, but this happens in a tolerable way behind the veil of abstraction.

  

Lichtung

The series of 3 woodcuts in their title refers on the one hand to the classical genre of the „Ukijo-e” (Flowing World), a name of a genre of Japanese painting and printmaking, on the other hand also to the element water in general. At the same time, each single graphics in their respective design, composition, specific graphic means and finally their individual titles allude to 3 well-known woodcuts by Katsushika Hokusai: “Kirifuri Waterfall”, “The Great Wave of Kanagawa” and “Yoro Waterfall “.

  
The basic visual idea of ​​this print series is that of image manipulation and the associated critical questioning of the visible: To what extent can a new visibility in the midst of the virtualized visible rediscover the artistically “invisible”?

Floating world

The series “Icarian Landscape” shows a terrain that is dissolving, structures that are disintegrating, a place that is disappearing and is barely recognisable as a landscape. At the same time, the figurative representation recedes, dissolves, passes over into the abstract, as if the decay had to be documented.

Osnowskis works of this series utilize the digital realm to combine with elements of traditional printing techniques like woodcut. The artists process of carving involves using digital gestures and touchscreen failures to develop his works, which once complete, may be read as an abstracted and monochrome version of contemporary digital image, full of vibrant color, suggestive with distortions, static and blips that contrast with subtle gradations of luminous color saturation. 

  

Ikarische Landschaft

CORDOAMA is a large-scale monochromatic woodcut that depicts a roaring wave towering towards the observer, capturing a fleeting moment at sea when waves break in endless repetition onto the shore, blurring the boundary between land, sea, and sky. The title refers to a location on the west coast of Europe, in southern Portugal, where the artist resided nearby and where the original photograph was taken: Praia do Cordoama.

This work was awarded 3rd place of the international LUXEMBOURG ART PRIZE in 2024.

Cordoama

Escaped Music Experience

Solo-exhibition at Stadtgalerie Klagenfurt
May 25 - July 11, 2021

NON-TRACELESS

The image is part of the series Tar Trails. It shows line-shaped repair work of asphalt cracks, from single motifs composed tar signs on the underground of the asphalt. Every street has its own micro climate, its own compound and thickness of the road surface, its own character of weathering and renovation. Every image of the series shows the tar trails of one street in Munich each.

Max-Lebsche-Platz

Gotthardstrasse

Heiglhofstrasse

Haderunstrasse

Am Waldrand

Graefelfinger Strasse

Schatzbogen

Baeckerstrasse

Wuermtalstrasse

Senftenauerstrasse

The image is part of the series Tar Trails. It shows line-shaped repair work of asphalt cracks, from single motifs composed tar signs on the underground of the asphalt. Every street has its own micro climate, its own compound and thickness of the road surface, its own character of weathering and renovation. Every image of the series shows the tar trails of one street in Munich each.


Neurieder Strasse

Synergie is referring to the interrelationship of the art scene and contemporary club culture. The topology of this sculptural work is based on the interweaving frameworks of two dual polycora (tesseract & hexadecachoron). It is referring to the current pandemic crisis, the challenges for these sectors and the potential of dealing with such difficulties by collaborative means. The intersections of these interweaving spatial structures are starting points for a network of curved surfaces exceeding the respective reference frame. They’re pointing out the possibility of creating emergent connections reaching outside of established perspectives.

SYNERGIE

While pumping liquid through a sequence of rooms, this installation is referring to the “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad and was set up in a group exhibition at Villa Schapira in Vienna, Austria. It is addressing the untenability of clear-cut categorization. Based on a quaternary topology of an encaged tetrahedron, the concept is dealing with the de- and re-synchronization between the pre-defined clocking of an impulse generator and the self-organized and material-based character of a heart.

HERZ UND KREISLAUF

Exhibited in a sculpture garden in the Austrian alps, this site-specific installation allows visitors to walk in and experience the surroundings through a variety of frames, its dual structure is only being detected if viewed up very close. The method of braiding several elements of fibre-reinforced material opened a suitable way to achieve higher stability for sculptures of bigger scale.

SPANNUNGSFELDER

This participatory, site-specific installation at the “Lendhafen” of Klagenfurt, Austria, is incorporating the very specific importance of this place for the societal fabric of the city. A hypercubic framework had been informed by collected data from interviews about actual situations at the site and enclosed by a cubic arrangement of permeable side parts. Given the appearance of a clear geometrical shape, participants can experience the complexity and variability of the structure only when entering the object. In the course of performances by Markus Liszt and Helena Eribenne, the concept was split up into a spatial and a time-related dimension.

BÜNDELUNG

The realization of an experimental short film based on a series of transformable sculptures was dedicated to reveal the catalysing capacities of film as a medium and instrument of artistic research. By visualizing movements within stability landscapes of bending-active structures in a reference to the active potential of enzymes, it successfully tested the cross-sectoral applicability of enzymatic perspectives. A concomitant artist collaboration with Stephanie Krawinkler dealt with the potential of bending-active intertwinings with the elastic characteristics of soap film.

ENZYMATIC ACT

By entangling collective human behaviour and the alteration of material properties in contingent mechanisms, this adaptive system is capable of processing behavioural information to reveal learning capacities on a non-digital basis. Devices to realize this concept of reactive experience are based on the intertwining of pneumatic as well as hydraulic circuits and transformable bending-active structures to execute feedback loops of accumulating impacts and handing back this bundled information to the participants through specifically modulated configurations. Within the hybrid system, various interfaces are connected to control units that autonomously regulate air draft according to changing arrangements of a multi-state array. In these grids of reversible bifurcation points, creeping of pre-stressed fibre composites is causing decisive reinforcement of directional tendencies. Every participant’s specific involvement is being imprinted to the subsequent behaviour of the device and the way the system performs is converging towards a bundled agglomeration of all previous manipulations.

CUMULATED RETRANSLATION

I have meditated on the visual representations and being of time in mushrooms that grow on trees. 
A dendrocronological time. 
All the lines are creating an optical effect.
And therein it takes another kind of time to look at them.

During this time of isolation i have gone deep into a self on my long walks in the woods and looked at these mushrooms. I read that most of the mushrooms are growing because the tree is wounded and on it way to dying or already dead, and i have thought a lot about my own future dying that i am on my way to inevitably. contemplating my mortality and letting myself feel it. In this quarantine i both seemed to have all the time in the world and no time at all. It is a time of now or never when you want to do things with your life.

the analog drawings are then flipped and reversed in order to create symmetri and resonate with the digital and the internet which is also a nature in itself. The mushrooms mycelium under ground connects the trees like we are connected by the world wide web.
and the drawings become more than just representations of reality, but an abstraction of it, to think, feel and question the experiences i have in the world in me and around me.

I hope this is enough contextulisations.
You can ask for more if you want

also check my instagram here:
https://www.instagram.com/stefanbakmand/

Dendrocronological meditations

I am doing a series of drawings on lsd paper, which is dealing with the discovery of lsd and its mystical religious backstory in elussinian mysteries and medieval bread hallucinations.

These drawings are preparations for a project called Bosch Fungi that i had to do at the danish art workshops in Copenhagen 11th of may to 31st of july 2020. Now the residency has been shortened, limiting my time there, putting more pressure on getting things things ready for my exhibitions in Aarhus this fall.

I investigate the discovery of lsd and the counterculture of the 60s, and its connection to medieval masshallucinations from bread decases and the Eleusinian Mysteries in greece.
Painters like Bosch and Breugel would depict a phenomenon called Saint Anthonys fire which came from the hallucinations caused by ergot, the deceased rye. Albert Hoffman, as swiss chemist was doing experiments with ergot at Sandoz labs for other purposes and accidentaly got it on his skin, experiencing an altered perception and thus LSD became a tool for the counterculture of the 60s.

I did a video about it:
Bosch Fungi, the history of LSD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPH0kMZhSxA&t=2s

Here, the drawing surface of the paper becomes a story in itself, refering to the distribution and ingestion of lsd, where you put the small squares on your tongue for the saliva to optain it faster.
It became the hippie sacrament in the 60s and 70s, like the flesh of christ that you receive through an oblate in church.

The grid of the tabs are making a background structure for all the drawings that keeps them together. the grid is making an idea of a fluid narrative.

Also I wish to meet researchers like psychologists and neurologists on the effects of psychoactive substances. And also to meet antropologists about the spirituality of these uses.


Bosch Fungi- doors of perception

"Sky Lights" is an ongoing media and installation project exploring how the image of the sky can illicit memory and connectivity between people and places. 

The work primarily consists of installations in which recorded videos of the sky from different locations around the world are projected from inside participants’ houses or work spaces into their windows. Each sky displayed references a location chosen by each participant. Videos may reference a home country or city, while others were chosen based on the visual conditions of the sky, or as a reference to a person. In this way, "Sky Lights" creates a sense of connection and presence between the participants’ current space and another place of personal significance.  

From the public view, the videos catch attention much as any screen (tv, phone, or computer) would. However, in contrast to the typical use of screens as advertising platforms, "Sky Lights" calls attention to an image that is calm and universal, inviting the viewer to observe the work as an image that fits naturally within the urban scene. 

The play on interaction with digital media is further carried out through instagram posts @sky.lights.daily. Here participant's videos and stories may be presented in a rhythm that utilizes the platform's potential for connectivity, while also contrasting its tendency towards the rapid consumption of information.

In preparation and corresponding to each installation, the artist engages each participant in an
interview with questions pertaining to the topics of presence, public and private space, and
the use of technology such as phones, and social media. Such questions provide insight on the
topics central to the project, while also creating a personal connection between the work and the
participants.

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