Victor Gajda (1938), LITTLE NOSTALGIA, 1969

nickel, height: 30 cm, width: 30 cm, depth: 16 cm

Studied at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts from 1956 to 1962, and received his diploma from the Faculty of Painting. In 1968, in the catalog of Wiktor Gajda's exhibition, Bożena Kowalska wrote about his expressive, violent, erotic-saturated painting that it was "an expression of protest against the aestheticism [...] of the post-impressionist school, which was unfamiliar to the student of Artur Nacht-Samborski." Very soon, however, as early as 1969, the artist exhibited his first sculptures. At the time, in the magazine "You and I", the well-known columnist Jan Zbigniew Slojewski appreciated their "extraordinary discipline and precision." He was also tempted to reflect on the aesthetics of sculpting: "If a head is sculpted, then sculpt a head that would be simultaneously real and unreal, naturalistic and abstract, similar to a human head, and yet different, bursting with some inner dynamism. And well, such are Gajda's heads" (Hamilton, Heads of Wiktor Gajda, "You and I" 1969, no. 10).
The hallmark of Wiktor Gajda's work is a strong, almost caricatural deformation of the human body. Most often he sculpted heads, which, as in the case of "A Little Nostalgia," are metaphorical images of human beings. Important to the meaning of the works are their titles, sometimes humorous or even ironic. In the title of one of the late sculptures, the author used the phrase "body ondulation." It seems that the term fits many of Gajda's realizations, perfectly expressing the kind of shaping of sculptural matter. As the artist himself admitted, humor is one of the expressive elements of his sculptures. At the same time, he explained: "Deformation in my sculptures is certainly the result of rebellion. A sarcastic way of dealing with human powerlessness in the face of constant thoughts of passing" (I don't need other people's visions. Wiktor Gajda on himself in conversation with Krystyna Jermanowska, "Show," pp. 23-24).
The bust on display is double-sided. The face sculpted on one side has been modeled in a "classical" manner, while maintaining proportions. The other "face" is heavily deformed, inhuman. The whole thing may be the artist's story about the dual nature of man and the not necessarily small longing to know himself. These faces facing opposite directions cannot see into each other, despite the mirrored surface of the sculpture.