Zachęta Project Room

curator: Magda Kardasz
cooperation: Julia Harasimowicz

The multi-level project deals with issues related to bodily movement and physical presence. Wandering is a state that allows one to disappear momentarily, to blend in with the surroundings, On the other hand, it is conducting to observe certain phenomena, which remain invisible in other conditions. The exhibition, playing with the ways of exhibiting works, is a multi-layered game with the body and senses of the viewer, at the same time becoming fully understandable only after passing through the whole distance in the landscape of the Zachęta Project Room. In this case, the journey begins with an attempt at a meeting of artists, continues in a commentary on their common impressions of functioning in the world of art, drawing on such notions as the visibility coefficient, and closes with reflections on the overlooked aspects of the artistic work. Physical aspects of both the artist's and the viewer's eyeball appear, as well as wider perceptual mechanisms within cultural institutions and the field of art. Not without significance for the project is also the context of the season, because snow can blind, make things unreal, but also highlight certain phenomena, just as happened to Hans Castorp in the famous snowstorm scene in Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain". That is also where the motif of borrowing a pencil comes from. The theme can be explained as crossing the barrier of otherness in contact with another person, which allows one to slightly melt together with that person, stretching the artist's state of focus between presence and absence.

Izabela Łęska (b. 1989) - a visual artist, engages in graphics, objects and text. She is interested in narrative, repetitiveness, the linguistic Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (linguistic relativity) and Andre Breton's objective chance. Currently a doctoral student at the Faculty of Art of the Pedagogical University of Kraków. Graduated of Graphic Art the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice (2013). She also studied at the Ecole Superieure d'Art de Clermont Metropole (Clermont-Ferrand, France).

Mikołaj Szpaczyński (b. 1989) - a painter, author of films and objects. In his works, he explores the topics of wandering and going off the beaten path, and seeks a perspective beyond the human one. Graduate of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice (2017). Currently a doctoral student at the Faculty of Intermedia of th Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków