IMAGE OF THE COLLECTION

Presentation of works from the collection of Arsenal Gallery and Podlaskie Association for the Promotion of Fine Arts on the 45th Anniversary of Arsenal Gallery.

Mirosław Bałka, Cezary Bodzianowski, Vesna Bukovec, Jiri Cernicky, Hubert Czerepok, Oskar Dawicki, Ryszard Grzyb, Elżbieta Jabłońska, Marek Kijewski, Katarzyna Kozyra, Piotr Kurka, Robert Kuśmirowski, Piotr Lutyński, Małgorzata Markiewicz, Agata Michowska, A. Mikołajczyk, Anna Molska, Natalia LL, Deimantas Narkevičius, Aleksandra Polisiewicz, Zbigniew Rogalski, Wilhelm Sasnal, Janek Simon, Mikołaj Smoczyński, Andrzej Szewczyk, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Piotr Wyrzykowski

IMAGE OF THE COLLECTION

A collection is a notion, by nature, purely historical. Collecting itself has got a direct connection with time, but it also requires a special code that would allow making choices. The historical character of this process constitutes a progressive conversion of ideas to notions.

We have become accustomed to the fact that in our culture over the past two centuries, the notions have begun to separate from the things. Building the image from the collection is an attempt to stop such process within itself. It cannot be the image signifying phenomenon, but the image discovering the meanings present in the world of eternal recurrence.

Concept of the Image of the collection stands for the retranslation notions into images.

The historical nature of the collection stops to have any meaning. But not a question about topicality or a place of the particular works in space, which build some kind of

a magical circle of the universe.

This circle should be split.

It is possible through the search of an image sense, which can be found while discovering a new formula for its existence, the relations between particular elements and our presence within its meaning. The only constant value of the image is its variability. The sense of the image cannot be separated from the questions like: what is the meaning of the image and how it was realized. That “how?” is a true statement that builds a form, which cannot be found in the image itself.

Our presence is one of the variables of the developing image that is deprived of a specific type of behavior. But inclination and involvement is essential here to decode particular elements. Decoding, that is, discovery and arrangement of the whole system of signs included in the image. The signs, which are the phenomenona signifying other phenomena.

The image of the collection is a question about the scope and character of a post-historical image. It is the question of how much collecting of notions and ideas in its physical remuneration is needed.

Can we imagine the collection of contemporary art in a virtual reality world?

Is every kind of reality not only something that we encounter on our way to…

Wojciech Łazarczyk