" THE LIGHTNESS OF THINGS " (group exhibition of artist's AT Gallery)
Joanna Adamczewska, Jakub Bąkowski, Marcin Berdyszak, Jerzy Hejnowicz, Joanna Hoffmann,
Przemysław Jasielski, Leszek Knaflewski, Wojciech Kujawski, Piotr Kurka, Agata Michowska,
Krzysztof Sołowiej, Zbigniew Taszycki, Marek Wasilewski
The Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle
Warsaw
May - June 2003
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„The
Lightness of Things” is an exhibition presenting artists from
the Poznań artistic milieu. All of them are graduates of the
Poznań Academy of Fine Arts and have presented their work in
the AT Gallery, determining to a large extent the artistic
preferences and the unique atmosphere of that place. Most of
the artists participating in the exhibition studied, graduated
and began their artistic careers in the 1980's, the decade
that witnessed many significant artistic events. That period
exerted a considerable influence on the later creative philosophy
and intellectual consciousness of many artists, which bore
fruits in the form of intensive artistic activity. In Poznań,
those were the years of heated discussions and clashing views
on the broadly understood question of art; that period witnessed
a proliferation of exhibitions organized by the so-called “alternative”
galleries, such as Wielka 19, Akumulatory 2, ON, or AT. The
role of those galleries, their influence on the development
of new thinking in art was, one should not hesitate to say, fundamental. The AT Gallery was established
in 1982 on the initiative of Tomasz Wilmański. Since the very
beginning of its activity this gallery was vividly reacting
to the artistic propositions of Poznań artists. In a sense,
AT Gallery was a gallery of that particular generation of people,
presenting all that was new, creative and genuine in art. Both
the choice of artists and the organization of exhibitions were
always done with respect for the genuineness of approach to
art and originality of intellectual participation in the world.
An artist was predominantly perceived as a person who participated
in reality with “broad horizons”. Generally speaking, since
the 1980's the artistic output of the people from the AT Gallery
circle has been marked with a positive kind of inner discipline
that is connected with exceptional sense of responsibility
in making artistic decisions. Professor Alicja Kępińska, who
has repeatedly analysed the work of the Poznań artists, remarks
that discipline understood in that way does not preclude emotions, but emotions meant
not as easy sentiments but as vital experiences that have got
the potential to keep themselves under control.
The title of the exhibition, „The Lightness of Things”, is a
slogan-type message referring indirectly to the understanding
of the sense of space, to removing “weight” from the object belonging
to the sphere of everyday existence. In the act of creation that
object begins to assume a different meaning, becomes an independent
being and creates a new, poetic and ontological value of art.
The artists participating in the exhibition address the problem
of rational being in space; they build objects /also acoustic
and mobile ones/, make sculptures, arrange the space around them,
use the so-called „ready-mades”, speak through the medium of
photography or video film. They are particularly sensitive to
the phenomenon of space, with which they start a creative dialogue
and about which they speak in various multimedia artistic articulations.
Tomasz Wilmański, Curator
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