Imperatyw

In the collective consciousness there exists the notion of a garden of sciences and arts in which the power of human intellect and spirit manifests itself. This garden is as old as humanity itself – the human and natural sciences confirm that from the moment man emerged from the darkness of history, he appeared as an individual rationalizing, but also aestheticizing reality, that is also resolving between the necessary and eternal and the adventitious and finite.

If we were to look at the panorama of the garden of arts, we would have to conclude that it does not situate itself as an autonomous part of the human world, that is culture, and it is not characterized by homogenous and monocultural content. It appears as an island in the boundless flower meadow of culture, unlimited by precisely delineated borders. On its outskirts or already beyond them there are manifestations of separate, unprecedented, sometimes even rebellious culture, difficult to notice at first glance. Perhaps it is so because the hosts of these enclaves are the inborn children of the Absolute, let us add, the children of its special care, into whom the Absolute (as Plato claimed) "enters and they speak in rapture all these beautiful poems [...] Inhuman are these poems and they do not come from people, but divine and from the gods. As much as this particular creative inflammation of the spirit by its very nature concerns, or at least should concern, all artists and all their works, the feature which makes it possible to single out some of its inhabitants from the garden of arts is a particular kind of this act of enthusiasm, i.e. permanent disposition and determination to implement this inflammation of the spirit into the sphere of artistic practice.

An adequate term to explain and justify this creative determination seems to be a notion of imperative - an unshakeable and unquestionable rule resulting from intellectual and emotional artistic, ideological and sometimes moral assumptions, because they are binding in the ethical sphere of conduct. Formulated in many ways in reference to an individual artistic strategy, although it does not refer to a universal ethical obligation, it always indicates the necessity of fulfilling it even against the will of a human being, thus also of an artist engaged in the realization of an artistic mission.

The idea adopted by the curators of the Imperative exhibition is to present the achievements of six original creative attitudes, some of which have found their permanent place in the history of contemporary art, but also authors whose artistic achievements show an ideologically determined creativity that has already had a chance for positive verification. The viewers of the exhibition will have an opportunity to encounter artistic creations realized in various materials and artistic techniques, i.e. in drawing, sculpture, fabric, glass, spatial objects as well as in photo-media and screen productions.

Artists and artists: Andrzej P. Bator, Łukasz Berger, Łukasz Gierlak, Wacław Szpakowski, Stach Szumski, Igor Wójcik