Festival main exhibition "LOVE" in Łódź

Curator: Kazimierz Pawlak in colaboration with Anita Bialic
City Art Gallery, Re: Medium Gallery, ul. Piotrkowska 113
Exhibition open: 19.11.2015 – 16.12.2015

Mustafa Ağatekin – Turkey; Elena Atrashkevich-Zlatkovic – Belarus; Zaiga Baiža – Latvia/Luxembourg; Maria Bang Espersen – Denmark; Dagmara Bielecka – Poland; Latchezar Boyadjiev – Bulgaria/USA; Peter Bremers – Netherlands; Małgorzata Dajewska – Poland; Giuliano Gaigher – Italy; Montserrat Duran Muntadas – Spain; Marek Firek – Poland; Martin Janecký – Czech Republic/USA; Wojciech Olech – Poland; Balázs Sipos – Hungary;Verena Schatz – Austria; Petr Stacho – Czech Republic; Emma Woffenden – Great Britain


I listen to Love,
the voice of the heart
sticks
in the gullet.
Julia Szychowiak

Sex, sex, sex omnipresent and filling our surroundings, and with it sexuality in all its forms. Endless discussions about gender and the need for social acceptance of different civil unions and homosexuality. And around us artistic attitudes and activities arousing a general lack of acceptance incongruent to universal morality.

Is true LOVE just a sexual phenomenon, as Sigmund Freud would prefer?
Or maybe the primal instinct of our first parents is the most pure and it is HE, and SHE who are the irreplaceable actors on the stage of life.
LOVE. A feeling, a type of relationships, behaviours and attitudes. A concept that’s difficult to interpret unambiguously. It’s been an inspiration in the creation of great works of art and literature.
‘What is love?’ the desert asked.
‘Love is the falcon’s flight over your sands. Because for him, you are a green field, from which he always returns with game. He knows your rocks, your dunes, and your mountains, and you are generous to him.’*

Love is the theme of the main exhibition of the 4th Play with Glass – European Glass Festival in Wrocław. We’ve invited 17 artists from 13 European countries to participate in it: Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, Hungary, the United Kingdom, and Poland. We have set them a seemingly simple task: ‘to talk’ about love. But how to convey emotions using cool glass?!

Various artistic attitudes, diverse cultural circles, and different uses of glass... Will the works presented at the exhibition arouse reflection? Controversy? Will they disappoint or impress? Will they leave us indifferent or touch our emotions?

You can speak of love in many ways. Because ‘love is a blinding light, a genetic need, an altered state of consciousness, a severe drug, a mental illness, a play for power – it is sperm and tears’**.

Welcome to the exhibition.
Kazimierz Pawlak, curator of the exhibition; cooperation: Anita Bialic

* The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho – Translated by Alan R. Clarke
** Gaspar Noé

Poems by Julia Szychowiak are in catalog of LOVE exhibition: www.europeanglassfestival.com/pl/node/244

Opening of the exhibition – photos