Zbigniew Libera in Atlas of Art

Zbigniew Libera hasn’t had an exhibition of his works for eight years, but on February 13, 2004, there will be an opening day in our gallery, Atlas of Art, in Łódź, Piotrkowska Street 116. The exhibition is entitled “Masters and Positives”.

The exposition has two cycles. The first one has been prepared especially for the exhibition in Atlas of Art. It consists of a few never published and ... never made interviews with such artists like: Zofia Kulik, Jan Świdziński, Andrzej Partum, Anastazy Wiśniewski and Leszek Piotrowski. Libera has just written these interviews and materialised them using the layout from some magazines. In “Duży Format”, supplement to the newspaper “Gazeta Wyborcza” dated February 9, Libera, interviewed by Katarzyna Bielas and Dorota Jarecka, says:

In the cycle “Masters” I present outstanding and unknown persons who, in my opinion, have played the greatest roles in Polish art. I want to say that not Tadeusz Kantor but Jan Świdziński or Andrzej Partum, not Magdalena Abakanowicz but Zofia Kulik, etc. (.....)
It is very sad that we know so little about them, especially now in the era of globalisation
and lack of identification in culture and art. If neither critics nor other institutions take care of them so maybe I will move someone or at least appal.

Inhabitants, from the cycle “Positives”


The second cycle you will see in Atlas of Art consists of partly published “Positives”. They are alterations of well known photographs, which are present in our imagination as special symbols.
Contrasting positives and negatives Libera proposes his perverse “positive” version.
In the quoted above interview he says:

It seems to me that nowadays we don’t want to know what reality is like, we want to experience it positively. That’s why the prisoners became inhabitants, those were sad, these are glad. On the other hand it can be the mechanism of Nazi or Soviet propaganda, which
changed reality into the set of optimistic slogans.

- I am sure that the exhibition of Libera’s works will be a great artistic event. It will be also an occasion to ask important questions about the place of modern art in today’s commercialised world – Jacek Michalak, the president of Atlas of Art says. When opening our gallery a few months ago, we promised to deal with this domain of art and make people come here regularly. And we achieved success. The exhibitions of works by Roman Opałka and David Lynch were visited by 6.000 people. Now it’s time for Zbigniew Libera.

Libera
Zbigniew Libera, with catalogue of his exhibition at Atlas of Art. (phot. by Krzysztof Pieszczyński)