In Icelandic art tradition, cultural and natural heritage
seems to play the main part, while the conception of
tradition in Polish art is a very complicated matter.
Current trends in Polish art, in spite of all their
variety, bring to light the dominance of ironic aesthetics
in reflections. Artists use the image they find around and
fix their attention on decomposition, imitation or
mystification, which is possible to interpret as an answer
to the long-term exile of reality in the visual world of
Poland in the Communist period in general and in the art of
that period in particular. On the other hand, the works
from Iceland on view in BWA Design gallery in Wroclaw are
deeply rooted in the Icelandic tradition. There is a
substantial tie between modern commentaries to this art and
the mythical and symbolic tradition. The significance of
the majority of the works presented is built on an
intensity of elements derived from the pre-Christian
culture of the North with its trolls and giants. References
to these “prehuman” creatures extend the
continuous line with magic in order to understand and
describe the world, alternative to the logocentrical
reductionism of rational recognition. There is a great
significance of space and human/woman’s body as a
ground for negotiations about natural and cultural
problems, which exists in deep connection with the remarks
above. A similar part is played in some of the works by
idyllic childhood theme colliding with a real, total
dependence on identification models and marketing
strategies, which we “buy” and build our
expectation on, almost from the beginning of our life. The
artists create their own relations with apparent or
projected real space by frequently referring to the
tradition of minimalist art with its integrity and
fundamental discipline of expression. With their art they
analyze the process of sensorial perception, rules of
experimental recognition or intuition as channels
determining the architecture of our vision of the world and
ourselves.
Text by Art Critic Anna
Mitu