Looking for a Beginning

Beginning - it is a word, an idea, a state, a provocation. It is one of the main reasons for humanistic reflection, metaphysical speculation and theological argumentation. It awakens the imagination of artists and purveyors of popular consciousness. The artists of our contemporaries refer to tradition, recall old ways of dealing with the burden of the problem, but also point to new territories of play between different attitudes and different perspectives that are important for us today.
We begin the exhibition with Zbigniew Gostomski's lightbox Owl, which sensitizes us to thinking about methods and the need to wisely view reality in the right light. Jan Tarasin's painting, The Beginning, is one of many works in his oeuvre that allude to pointing out the possibility of different beginnings and linking them to different orders.
The photograph the only one in the exhibition, by Zbigniew Dłubak, fits very clearly into the tradition of modern art iconography. The experience of beginning is particularly strong for the artists, as the beginning of another work, a series, the taking up of an artistic problem. This issue goes beyond a single form of artistic activity, it is experienced by all those who have a white canvas in front of them, a blank sheet of paper, an unsigned stave, an alphabet, a language. Artists such as, Maria Stangret-Kantor, Andrzej Szewczyk, Kamil Kuskowski refer to these situations in their numerous statements.
In taking a stance and indulging in imagination, it is worth keeping a distance that allows for criticism and self-reflection. Schematism and routine, as Krzysztof M. Bednarski's work, Exercises in Dialectics (thesis, antithesis, synthesis) reminds us, always leads astray. Where one can suggest a beginning, one can also point to an end. This is not the painter's first gesture entitled The End of Painting, but in Edward Krasiński's performance, thanks to its Dadaist affinity, it has a special significance.
As we can see from the works of Stefan Gierowski and Edward Narkiewicz, art and painting are able to find for themselves ever newer forms of expression that break down old definitions and ossified notions. The artists whose works we show here are the originators of our Gallery at various stages of its development. For obvious reasons, not all those who co-created the Gallery's history have appeared here. This exhibition is a continuation of an earlier look at its beginnings, which found expression in the exhibition Among Friends in 2018.