art as transgression 2013

AGATA KLUŹNIAK

NOTES/ZAPISKI

16.11-08.12.2013

Culture Promotion Association ‘Kamienica’, ‘Lamus’ Art Space and Terminal08 Gallery invite you to the opening of two exhibitions which is part of an annual series ‘Art as Transgession’.

Project supported by Gorzów City Council and Lubuskie County Council.

Exhibition supported by Culture Ireland.

One of our first experiences is the process of emergence into the world. A small child finds itself in reality. Exploring it, it gets to know the limits of its body and of its identity. It discovers that it’s possible to grasp something outside of itself or to move it, it learns to read the signals of the senses and to communicate with the world. In particular, it learns language, which from then on will impose on it a perception of reality characteristic of the culture in which it is growing up.
According to Buddhism, we are in reality one with the world, all the world’s diversity comes from one source. We create many of our own problems under the illusion of our being separate. No matter how we understand this, within a certain order we are separate organisms, bodies functioning in space.
Humans have shaped matter since the Stone Age, making objects. The tools, vessels, buildings, ornaments, amulets, pieces of art and ceremonial objects of the past eras are a physical trace of the cultures which produced them. These objects which have survived to our times are fascinating not only because of their nearly unattainable craftsmanship. It seems that artifacts of the past carry an element which in the era of mass production exists only in trace amounts. Perhaps this is derived from the sensitivity of those other, nearly extinct cultures to sacrum.
Mircea Eliade says that there had probably not existed an object, animal, plant, element or aspect of human physiology which had not, at some time and in some archaic community, been considered as a hierophany. He says that for the people of those communities many aspects of everyday life were a sacrament, a ceremony through which a person came into contact with reality. Fundamental activities, such as the intake of food or sexual intercourse, thus had a sacred dimension, they were a ritual connecting people with vital forces. For the archaic person, the profane meant nothingness, from which human beings had to cleanse themselves through ritual.
We live in an era where cars and shoes bear the names of ancient gods. This fact compels to search for meanings which are present in humans irrespective of their culture, though are not possible to separate from culture.