PROTOPLASM

FRAGMENTS note in the margin of the Protoplasm

SUCH A MAMMAL

Let’s imagine a thirty-meter and one-hundred-fifty ton organism. Now, it’s the biggest living animal in the world. The mammal, that both delights and frightens by its size. The multicellular system, where units, even numerous and various, stick to each other so that they could keep into one body. With regard to the expended post-industrial space it is an absurd metaphor. In fact, it is a place that has got rid of its primordial utility.
There exists phenomenon in the nature, in English it is called play dead, when the organism pretends to be dead, but it is a form of protection against danger. It occurred to me, that the power station is something like a hardened place looking forward to visitors, who will initiate the motion.

ORGANELLE

Walls, which artificially mark the borderline between the old interior and a new structure, are rather screens to both of them; do not decrease the value, but highlights potentiality. A new species is introduced into an old ecosystem. A white frame is like a research situation, some contract to be artificially arranged but serves life. We are looking at this phenomenon which changes in front of us.
The power station space is not neutral, and its size, like the prehistoric animal skeleton in the Museum of Nature, poses a question of beginnings, roots and the history. For the artists invited to the project, these are the question of identity, borders, loneliness and their own emotions. Furthermore, it is significant that all of them come from Podlachia and they here present their works.

THE MOST LIVING PART – PROTOPLASM

The big mammal hides beneath its outer layer the architecture of countless and small units, which communicate with their nearest and farthest neighbour, a system of special connections. Everything what is big, has its beginnings in something what is small. Something that
cannot be seen with the naked eye, but only a microscopic look gives an idea of a microcosm, a viscid substance, where all the vital functions run. Not to be ranged is the scale of such minimal movements of small substances, permeating basic organelles of each body. This viscous substance holds everything together and consequently it avoids dispersing all its components in the chaos of movements. The protoplasm is a primordial body that constitutes the LIVING MATTER.
The exhibition atmosphere is sinuous. From private statements to cold structures – but, in fact, all the works are about the emotional gesture of each artist, what, as a consequence unites the whole presentation. The young artists, through their personal message, go beyond their own abilities, they prove existence of the imagination’s autonomy and the universal role of art that is based on a living experience.

Iza Tarasewicz