opening: 2.12.2022, at 18.00 | author meeting: 3.12.2022, 1.00 pm
The starting point for the exhibition "Technology abhors ambition" is an interview conducted by Piotr Zugaj with Lucjan Demidowski in 2020, which will also become part of the publication accompanying the exhibition. The works of the two artists presented at the exhibition look into each other, at times the question of their authorship is lost and distracted, what matters is the image. This approach to the Demidowski/Zugaj relationship introduces a rift in the pupil-master arrangement, which becomes a space for mutual inspiration.
(...) Lucjan Demidowski takes the game with perception to another dimension, which is photography. It is not enough for him to act once and disrupt the order of the place, making it unreal with the help of the illusionists' favorite prop, the mirror. For Demidovsky's photos become permanent images of illusion and the invisible - the mirrors appearing on them "look" at the opposite view invisible neither to him nor to the camera lens. The artist thus constructs visual treatises on the nature of the photographic image and the relationship of the image to reality.
In addition to mirrors, he also uses stones and variable viewing angles. In some works it is very easy to trace the interference, others are so complicated that we see interference where there is none.
In his realizations, on the other hand, Piotr Zugaj, in a way, reveals the backstage of Demidovsky's works, and makes an effort to recreate them, based on his memory. He subjects it to reflection, creating his own images, directly or indirectly taken from the realizations of his older colleague. For Zugaj, the illusory space, the space of the mirror and its reflection, is an attempt to understand Demidovsky's working method and way of imaging. Something much more than an unmasking of his workshop - another variation on reality.
Paweł Bąkowski - curator of the exhibition
Organizer:
Photo-Gen Gallery of the Center for Culture and Art in Wroclaw
pl. bpa Nankiera 8, 50-140 Wrocław
www.fotogen.okis.pl
