Exhibition — "13 Square Meters"
Artists: Krzysztof Balcerowiak, Eva Cygańska, Magdalena Firych, Rafał Górczyński, Paweł Kaszczyński, Paweł Kula, Monika Lisiecka, Dominika Perz, Władek Radziwiłłowicz, Dawid Szafrański, Wojtek Tężycki, Darek Zatoka, Paweł Zimmerman.
The world presents itself to us above all as a collection of tools—things for a purpose. We spontaneously perceive things as already endowed with a practical sense. And it is precisely these pragmatic properties that act as the main determinants of human actions, carried out today by individuals equipped with an endless array of such tools, attributes, and measures.
How, then, could one not associate the title of the exhibition with the usable floor space of a cozy kitchenette in a newly rented office room, or the size of a bathroom—quite generous for a student apartment... and so on. (Associating it with an entire apartment is out of the question—there, we would definitely prefer to see a three-digit square footage : ).
To reassure any relentless pragmatists and pragmatists alike, let me state at last that this is not about floor space. For curator Eva Cygańska invited thirteen artists to participate in this exhibition. It is a unique collective project in which each participant was given a formal requirement to base their work on a surface area of one square meter. This should be understood as a form of creative and artistic provocation undertaken by 13 different individuals. Entangled in a rather unified, measurable reality—represented here by the titular m
2
—we will witness personal solutions, perhaps serving as an attempt to break free from Heidegger’s das Man.
After all, this increasingly measurable world still fails to give us a sense of being at home. We long for it, true, but that desire usually takes a shape that must be considered a failure. In a jungle of measurement units and digital parameters, it is easy to lose track of Authenticity.
Perhaps, then, poetry—visual this time, at the gallery of the Polish Theatre in Poznań.
— Paweł Kaszczyński