EXHIBITION 2015, BYDGOSZCZ
Project Reflex
Muzeum Okręgowe im. Leona Wyczółkowskiego w Bydgoszczy
Galeria Sztuki Nowoczesnej
25.06 – 23.08.2015
Project Reflex (2014–2015)
Artists: Krzysztof Balcerowiak, Andrzej Bobrowski, Stefan Ficner, Marek Glinkowski, Jarosław Janas, Dorota Jonkajtis, Katarzyna Krawczyk, Maciej Kurak, Małgorzata Maryna Mazur, Agnieszka Mori, Grzegorz Nowicki, Mirosław Pawłowski, Max Skorwider, Piotr Szurek, Michał Tatarkiewicz, Radosław Włodarski
Curator: Maciej Kurak
Poster: Andrzej Bobrowski
Video: Marek Glinkowski / Text: Maciej Kurak / Sound: Radosław Włodarski
The project entitled Refleks [Reflex] is a collection of graphic works created by graphic
artists from Poznań and presented in the form of a book. The works refer to socio-cultural issues and draw attention primarily to local events. Similarly to the Poznań expressionists from the Bunt group, the artists take a critical stance. They look for community values that really affect the existing culture.1 The criticism of contemporary society contained in the works reveals hidden, negative mechanisms of the functioning of the system.2 Contesting the passive attitude which affirms the existing social order, the graphic works reveal the value of the rationalisation process, which stimulates creative thinking by constructing concepts in accordance with the criteria of reason.
Maciej Kurak
1. Cf. R. Wellek ‘Schiller and Goethe attached so much importance to the fact that lyrical poetry flows from an inner experience, they were not content with simply presenting subjective emotions.’ As quoted in K. Sauerland Od Diltheya do Adorna. Studia z estetyki niemieckiej, Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1986 (my translation).
2. ‘Capitalist society is a union of contradictions. It gets freedom through exploitation, wealth through impoverishment, advances in production through restriction of consumption. … The commodity world is a “falsified” and “mystified” world, and its critical analysis must first follow the abstractions which make up this world, and must then take its departure from these abstract relations in order to arrive at their real content.’ Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, London and New York: Routledge, 2000, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/reason/ch02-4.htm (online version; no pagination) (accessed on 25 August 2020).