The concept and title of the ZNAKI exhibition have been born out of contact with the art of Jan Tarasin, out of a reflection on his search for original signs to describe the world, objects and situations. The artist’s graphic pieces and occasionally his oil pictures placed signs in certain spaces, while signs and situations adopted the character of symbolic spaces. This duality and the moment when a sign becomes a symbol has interested me for a long time. It seemed to me interesting to find out whether there is a place for the symbol and the sign in contemporary art. I asked myself a question about the actuality of symbols when a sign becomes a symbol in other artists. Hence the idea of the SIGNS exhibition, to which I invited artists who cooperate with the gallery, artists representing various attitudes and artistic strategies, who are united in the search for their own sign or reflection on its symbolic meaning. At the exhibition, we will find works of artists who evoke symbols and signs that have almost always belonged to visual culture – mandalas, labyrinths, animals, female silhouettes, rainbows and light as a symbolic and mystical element in the picture. We will find works by artists who give their own meaning to selected objects of everyday use, elevating them to the rank of a sign or their own symbol. These include envelopes, candles, images and fragments of railways, repeatedly processed. Maps of obliterated, unrecognisable cities, idols and figures constructed from toys – children’s dreams. There will also appear undefined, surreal SIGNS, with ambiguous impact and message, existing in mysterious spaces.

Ryszard Ługowski