Le mie origini, furono tumultuose i miei ricordi, sono ancorati; nel profondo dell’incoscio che innerorabilmente, hanno segnato il mio destino.
Il ricordo nostalgico vissuto con il nonno,
Costantin Borislavich, (il nonno bello nell’animo e nel corpo, ingeniere di carriera non- esercitato, la sua passione fu il teatro al quale si dedicò come scenografo, pianista e astronomo dilettante), i miei genitori, Elena aveva cominciato il Licieo Artistico quando scoppiò la guerra.
Sfollata in Itali si guadagnava da vivere facendo ritratti, era l’annoi 1943. Janusz (figlio di un gitano russo e madre polacca a diciassette anni anarchico e combattente), (furo gli unici sopravvissuti e il resto delle famiglie spazzate via con il vento dell’olocausto della guerra).
Il primo, mio nonno, coinvolto nella fiamma della rivoluzione russa il resto trascinati sia come testimoni, e protagonisti, sia come strumenti o come foglie scaraventati nella tempesta della seconda guerra mondiale.
Mio padre Janusz, non ancora ventenne finì come prigioniero politico in un lager della Siberia (Kamantchtka) per tre anni. Da lì con un viaggio più che allucinante ( sarebbe un storia a parte) attraversò la Russia, l’Asia centrale, la Persia con i suoi giardini pensili per approdare in Africa. Dove prende parte all’armata anglo-polacca del generale Anders. Il suo battesimo di fuoco fu la battaglia di El Alamein, risale verso l’Italia-battaglia di Motecassino, e la linea gotica.
 

Mia madre e mio nonno roccambolescamente fuggono dai tedeschi che li portavano verso Treblinka e scappando attraverso l’Austria approdano in Italia dopo il 43’.
Finisce la guerra e questa parte dell’umanità comincia a leccarsi le sue ferite.
Janusz, si ritrova in una base militare sul versante adriatico più in là nella terra di Leopardi e Beniamino Gigli, nasce l’amore dei due giovani; pensavo che il dramma delle persecuzioni era finito, invece no. Inesorabilmente l’indifferenza politica ancora una volta colpisce…….Mia madre Elena come il nonno Costantin Borislavich, furono detenuti dalle forze armate americane rinchiusi in un campo di prigionia per essere rimpatriati in Unione Sovietica e sa Dio cosa sarebbe successo. Mio padre non ci penso due volte, con un gruppo di compagni senza fare grossi danni liberò gran parte dei prigionieri; diventando tutti profughi e in più lui disertore……
Con l’arrivo della primavera e la Pasqua ci fu anche il mio.

 
 


All’alba guardando le stelle e stringendo le mani di mio padre arrivarono i sintomi del parto accompagnate dalla famosa voglia, in questo caso di patate bollite, che anime generose le offrirono. Il desiderio mi è rimasto fino ad oggi di questo sospirato tubero.
Ai miei primi strilli assistette Janusz che con le sue poderose ed energiche mani mi collocò su questa terra tagliandomi il cordone ombelicale con maestria e dolcezza.
Questo evento da immprovissato ostetrico si ripete per tante volte in tante altre avventurose circostanze.
Il mio arrivo in questo mondo fu in un momento doloroso dell’umanità, figlio di guerrieri in fuga e di grandi dolori, ma allo stesso tempo di grandi ideali e speranze….
La mia nascita fu accompagnata da uno stato fisico comatoso la febbre e la dissenteria mi stava riportando dal creatore, ormai in fin di vita succede uno dei tanti miracoli che mi hanno accompagnato nella mia avventurosa esistenza.
Chissà per quale strane circostanze un dottore proveniente dal Cile ( paese in cui avrei vissuto il sogno utopistico di una società libera, interrotto dal tragico colpo di stato dell’11 settembre e dove è nata mia figlia Maya) ordinò di darmi un cucchiaio di farina abbrustolita con un po’ di acqua, e se passavo la nottata …
Ed eccomi qua, in questo mio cammino terreno, con un bagaglio di sentimenti e debolezze cominciò il mio atavico deambulare per questo mondo, ora in circhi, ora in viaggi avventurosi che mi portarono ai quattro punti cardinali della terra. Cercando una patria che non trovo. vorrei concepirla, vorrei crearla, visualizzarla, e questo che mi ha spinto verso l'arte, e in questa condizione Ho avuto un bellissimo destino tragico e felice. Di crescere e formarmi nella dura accademia della vita. Concedendomi anima e corpo al demone dell'azione creativa, tesimone del nostro tempo da perfetto apolide...
Io sono il mio proprio cielo
Io sono il mio proprio inferno.

Kokocinski

 

 

THE ARTIST'S LIFE
My origins were tumultuous and the memories anchored in the depths of my unconscious have left their inexorable mark on my destiny.
I have nostalgic memories of life with my grandfather Costantin Borislavich (the grandfather who was beautiful both in soul and body, an engineer who was passionate about the theatre, where indeed he worked as a set designer, and who was also a pianist and amateur astronomer) and my parents. My mother Elena had just begun High School specializing in Art when war broke out.
My grandfather and my mother fled to Italy to seek refuge; my mother earnt a living painting portraits. It was 1943.
My grandfather, my mother and my father Janusz (the son of a Russian gipsy and a Pole, at the age of seventeen he was already an anarchist and a combatant) were the only survivors; the rest of the family was swept away by the winds of the holocaust and by war.
My grandfather was the first, swallowed up by the flames of the Russian revolution. The others were dragged along, witnesses or protagonists or instruments, like leaves hurtling in the raging storm of the Second World War.
Before the age of twenty my father Janusz was imprisoned for three years in a Siberian lager (in Kamntchatka). From there, he embarked on an incredible journey throughout Russia, central Asia and the hanging gardens of Persia and eventually reached Africa, where he enrolled in General Anders' Anglo-Polish army. His baptism of fire was the battle of El Alamein; after that he travelled from the South of Italy right up to the North. He took part in the battle of Montecassino and crossed the Gothic Line.
My mother and grandfather had made their incredible escape from the Germans who were taking them to Treblinka and by travelling through Austria they managed to get to Italy in 1943.
The war ended and this part of humanity began to lick its wounds.
The love between Janusz and my mother was born while Janusz was at a military base on the Adriatic front, in the land of Leopardi and Beniamino Gigli. They thought the tragedy of persecution had ended, but they were wrong. They were once again relentlessly struck by political indifference....My mother Elena and my grandfather Costantin Borislavich were detained by the Allied Armed Forces and locked up in a prison camp awaiting repatriation to the Soviet Union (where God only knows what would have happened to them). My father didn't think twice: with the help of some companions and without doing much damage he managed to free most of the prisoners, thereby turning them into refugees and turning himself into a deserter....
With the arrival of spring and Easter, I too arrived.
At dawn, gazing at the stars and gripping my father's hands, my mother felt the first contractions together with cravings for boiled potatoes, which some generous souls gave her. Even today I still adore this yearned-for tuber.
Janusz witnessed my first cries and placed me on this earth with his powerful, energetic hands, cutting my umbilical cord with skill and gentleness.
From then on he was involved in many other adventurous situations.
I arrived in this world in one of humanity's painful moments. I am the son of warriors forced to flee and of great pain, but at the same time of great ideals and hopes....
Just after my birth dysentery and fever threatened to take me back to the Creator. I was in a coma and dying when one of the many miracles that have accompanied me during my life occurred. Who knows by what strange circumstances a doctor from Chile (the country where, as an adult, I would experience the utopian dream of a free society, a dream smashed by the tragic coup of the 11th September, and where my daughter Maya would be born) ordered my parents to give me a spoonful of roasted flour mixed with a llittle water, and if I got through the night....
And here I am. On this earthly path, with my store of sentiments and weaknesses, my primitive wanderings throughout this world began, at times in circus tents, at times on adventurous journeys to the four corners of the earth, looking for a homeland which I cannot find; I would like to conceive it, create it, visualize it, and this drove me to art. My fate has been beautiful, tragic and happy. I grew up and was educated in the tough school of life as a totally stateless person, giving myself body and soul to the demon of the creative act as a witness of our times....
I am my own heaven.
I am my own hell.

Kokocinski

 

 

PAINTINGS
Two years ago Kokocinski impressed many visitors with a wonderful exhibition at the Refectory Hall of the Palazzo Venezia. That exhibition was entitled 'Transfiguration' and it sent forth that angry and apocalyptic spirit that makes Kokocinski unique on the contemporary art scene. A stateless, restless artist, citizen of the world and solitary individualist, Kokocinski has progressively developed an acute moral conscience which causes him to be extremely involved in yet aristocratically detached from his theme. In this fully mature phase his approach to his art is disconcerting in its total lack of any form of hedonism and the importance he nevertheless gives to reaching the highest possible quality of "manufacture".
Kokocinski has decided to have a "hand-to-hand fight" with his works, which look like they're his children, adored and massacred at the same time. In a certain sense the way he goes about things is frightening because he ignores the delicacy of the viewer's soul but never means to upset by using cheap sensational effects.
Indeed, the refined, somehow classical taste which Kokocinski has always expressed certainly does not subside in this current phase, however convulsive and exasperated it may be. This exhibition features his figures, maimed by a force that shakes them violently and drags them like Dantesque souls, a sort of demoniacal poem built using fear and desperation.

 

 

 
   

 

 

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