At the exhibition, we show selected objects and installations, in which motion plays a particular role. In all these works it functions as the device for instilling meaning and bringing coherence to the message. In this manner, motion has almost become an object. In keeping with Einstein’s theory, energy turns into matter.
We present works of 16 artists from Poland and other countries. We have aimed to show the broadest time scale possible. The oldest work is from 1959 and the latest from 2017. The works raise a variety of issues and use different media approaches and symbolic combinations.
Mirosław Bałka confronts motion with motionlessness. Out of eight rounds of salt – the symbol of value – he has only set one in motion.
Kuba Bąkowski blows up reminiscing about Gagarin, putting himself in the role of the creator.
Krzysztof M. Bednarski pours dirty water from one head of Karl Marx into another.
Danny Devos waves knives in front of boards describing the victims of the Polish serial killer.
Adam Garnek proposes an interactive work. The viewer has an opportunity to turn sound into image.
Noel Harding, in a construction made of aluminium pipes and pulsating light, expresses a suppressed personality.
Marian Szulc – the exhibition’s doyen – has created mobiles that are abstraction in motion.
Julian Opie analyses human traits in computer animations.
Žilvinas Kempinas has suspended fragile magnetic tapes between two fans.
Evelyn Loschy has constructed an apparatus for destroying sculptures, thus demonstrating the destructive role of the touch.
Krištof Kintera has dressed a crow in a leather jacket, and placed it on a branch of a tree, making it deliver comments on civilisation.
Marek Kvetán has enriched the pattern of an oriental rug with pulsating, colourful lamps. The Arabic music enhances the effect.
Walid Siti has put figurines of soldiers into a revolving circle of barbed wire in motion, which every now and then spits one of them outside the orbit of the circle.
Agnieszka Kurant, Janek Simon and Leszek Lewandowski make use of the symbolic potential of the clock – each in their own, very different way.
