Imaginoscope

At the source of Leszek Lewandowski’s projects lies distrust of human perception. Scepticism towards it has for many years accompanied his artistic search, leading, on the one hand, to his questioning the mechanisms of perception, and on the other, to his continuously revealing the problematic status of truth and of the issues generally perceived as obvious. In this, Lewandowski makes use of the resources of culture and science, the achievements of op-art and kinetic art, the discoveries of mathematics, optics and psychology of perception.

The Imaginoscope is a cylindrical object set in motion by a small engine. Due to its perforated surface and a light bulb placed inside, a rotating cylinder projects spiralling patterns of light onto the walls. The installation is activated when the viewer enters into its space. Exposed to the monotonous movement of the circles of light, the viewer falls prey to various illusions and experiences disturbances in perception and states similar to trance, hypnosis or stupor. Putting perception to test, Lewandowski expresses his doubt in the vision of reality resulting from subjective interpretation of stimuli coming from the environment. He arranges a situation that balances on the borderline between a game with the viewer and an experiment with illusion, to provoke reflection on the uncritically internalised images of the world.

The Imaginoscope may be interpreted in the context of Wstęp do imagineskopii (Introduction to Imaginescopy, publ. 1977) by Śledź Otrembus Podgrobelski (most probably pseudonym of Stanisław Moskal). This mock-treatise kept in the convention of a scientific text presents the aims, methodology and research tools of imaginescopy, a fictitious science  of broadening imagination by means of the sense of sight. The fundamental instrument to achieve this aim is the imaginescope, that is “any hole piercing any solid substance through”, for instance a hole left in a board by a fallen-out knot. Podgrobelski attached footnotes and bibliography to his lecture, and constructed specialist descriptions illustrated with technical drawings. The exaggerated “academic” narration served to ridicule the hermetic discourse of science and the people’s tendency to uncritically accept scientific findings. Lewandowski appears to maintain a similar distance to exact sciences; yet he focuses less on discrediting their achievements than on demonstrating their insufficiency by confronting them with the essentially unfathomable power of imagination.

Izabela Kopania
translated from Polish by Klaudyna Michałowicz

photo Jan Szewczyk

photo Jan Szewczyk