B&B Photo Gallery in Bielsko-Biała / June 3, 2022, at 6 pm
Artur Rychlicki - photographer born and living in Cracow. He grew up in a family and environment cooperating with Tadeusz Kantor and the Cricot 2 theater, which did not remain without influence on his creative attitude. His works have been presented during individual exhibitions in, among others, Great Britain (Polish Cultural Institute in London), Denmark (Gallery of the headquarters of the International Red Cross, Ronne), Germany (Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts in Saarbrucken), France (gallery La maison des associations Orleans), and in Poland (Cracow, Katowice, Bielsko-Biala, Torun, Wroclaw).
B&B Gallery of Photography, Municipal House of Culture Fibers, 12 1 Maja St., Bielsko-Biala
vernissage and meeting with the author at the Friday, June 3, at 18:00, exposure until June 21, 2022
Gallery Curator: Inez Baturo [316th exhibition]. Care of the Gallery: Emilia Grala
Patronage: Center of Photography Foundation, ZPAF Mountain District
The "Gardens of Happiness" exhibition consists of 66 photographs arranged in triptychs:
- 9 photographs in 30 x 30 cm format (50 x 50 cm binding),
- 57 photographs in 20 x 20 cm format (30 x 30 cm binding).
The photographs were taken between 2008-2019 in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Spain, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Abkhazia, Armenia, Uzbekistan and Morocco in digital and classic-silver techniques. The premiere of the exhibition took place at the "Pauza" gallery in Cracow, in September 2019.
Gardens of happiness
The work of Artur Rychlicki has always been, in its spirit, strongly imbued with the thought of Tadeusz Kantor. This can be seen, for example, in his treatment of human life as an eternal wandering, and the artist himself as a wanderer. Kantor's constant reference to the Odyssey may indicate that, as Jaromir Jedlinski writes, he hoped for a return, or at least the possibility of returning home. Note, however, that Man's first home was the garden. It is written, after all: "So God took man and placed him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and tend it. And in doing so He gave man this command: "Of every tree of this garden you may eat according to your taste; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you must not eat, for when you eat of it you shall inevitably die.""
Rychlicki's latest exhibition looks precisely at "Gardens of Happiness": places full of life, lands flowing with milk and honey, oases, paradises on earth - only that once, in the past, because now they are devoid of meaning, hope and promise, often dead.
He looks at the places where someone picked the fruit from the tree of knowledge, but the fruit was sour, so the garden was stopped being tended, abandoned, allowed to go feral (or rather: sterile). Every now and then only someone looks there and maybe even delights in the ruins found there, traces of man, but after a short while he leaves this garden and goes, on a journey - to another....
