Trees - Shadows – Dreaming, a solo exhibition of thephotography of Krzysztof Ligęza[1] opened on
10th of January 2014 in the Karwacjans and Gladysz's Manor – the
City Museum of Gorlice.
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| Krzysztof Ligęza, Delfin |
Krzysztof Ligęza's photographs, as we have seen
in the Professor Włodzimierz Kunz exhibition room, are a result of careful
observation of nature, an expression of delight and philosophical astonishment
of the world. The wild nature in the artist's photography is a testament of
truth about human existence in the cosmic universe, but the starting point of his
search is Nature - physis. The drama of Ligęza's images is built using a
romantic set of means of expression. We see some stone buildings, lightning
tearing the sky, rushing rivers, a sea shore during the tide phase, wavy lines
of a mown field. In turn, the trees associated with the ancient cult,
photographed in infrared, show their amazing, ghostly outlines.
The interpretations by Krzysztof Ligęza
resemble the points of view of the first philosophers - the pre-Socratics, for
which as we know, there was no clear distinction between the animate and
inanimate; and also questions nature – physis did not remain in
opposition to the sphere, which today we call humanities. Thales and Heraclitus were not naive physicists by
today's notion of science, but they faced the great mystery – the problem of
human nature which appeared to them as bound up with the mystery of the cosmos.
Flowing water, lightning, rocky coastlines, the unknown cause of the tides of
the sea, aroused fear and surprise, as well as a sense of transience and the
inevitability of death. The questions that we view separately today, the Greeks
merged into one stream – philosophia – the source of the later science.
Perhaps the artist's earlier admiration of the
writings of Stanisław Lem[1] corresponds
with his creative attitude, in which he takes existential themes, starting from
the image of the world of nature.
One of the questions that K. Ligęza asks
concerns what the reality given to us in sense of perception really is. We know
that the image of the world that we perceive in our daily experience, from the
point of view of neuroscience is an illusion. The science confirmed the topic
of investigation of Democritus about the so called secondary qualities. The
content of visual experience, such as e.g. colour, is not inherent to things,
but is the result of the work of our senses. The impression of red is a result
of our eyes response to light waves of a certain length reflected on the object
- an image which is a product of the brain, not an "objective"
feature of the things of their own. There are also processes so fast that the
eye does not register their different phases, while others are so slow that we
do not recognize their movement[2]. This
raises the question of whether the image which was made as a result of long
exposure, or a picture which recorded an instantaneous moment of the process -
in both cases, looking beyond the response of the human eye - is more
"real" than our daily, familiar perception?
Thus, the photograph, which in a
"mechanical" way captures what surrounds us, is the "print"
of the world no less legitimate than the image generated by our natural
perception. But what is the reality an sich? A photographic work
entitled Dolphin, which represents a wave of the swollen White River,
shows a shape resembling the back of the marine mammal. But what does the
flowing water "really" look like? Under the microscope, it would be a
swarm of molecules; in the image taken from a satellite we would probably see a
gray ribbon looking like... a snake?
Many people think that the painter
has more creative freedom when starting work on a white ground, putting the
first patch, outlining the direction...The Photographer selects the
"ready" element, "framing" the existing shape of the world.
However, his work does not rely on a simple production of "prints".
The art of photography reflects the selective and projective way of how our
cognitive processes work – we always skip something and in relation to the
background of what is actually irrelevant, we recognize a clear, fixed
structure. Also – as we remember e.g. from Gestalt psychology – by starting
with the fragments we "guess" a continuation – a form. So the subject
that we see in the present now, arrives later in the halo of memories,
also leans towards the future, and in the perspective of expectation and hope
of a some sort of sequel, it exists whenever we summon it.
Do we start in our lives from a ”clean slate” since the T=0 moment? After all, being
already inside some story, thrown in context, we find targets recognized by
others, or we encounter obstacles that we have to bypass or integrate into the
content of our future life.
Observing the works exhibited in Gorlice it can
be concluded that Krzysztof Ligęza is close to the baroque way of understanding
art: cognitive anxiety, motifs of awake and dreaming. The Artist seems to
penetrate that which is hidden beneath the surface of everyday experience; a
shadow play, light drawing out from behind the unclosed door. In his works we
can see references to the experiences of writers and philosophers – Pedro
Calderon de la Barca and his drama Life is a dream, The Republic
of Plato along its famous cave motif and even The Matrix movie,
indicating metaphors that suggest fictionality of the world as perceived by the
senses. The Author by his works, seems to admit that today’s popular estetics
of the uncanny, which derrives from Romantism, touch in him these strings of
human sensitivity; and the areas of creative imagination, in which everything
hidden, mysterious and dangerous is fascinating, and sometimes more interesting
than the reality depicted in the light of day in the serenity of Renaissance
symmetry ...
Paweł Nowicki
translation:
Sue Darville
[1] The great Polish writer, who in his works, filled
by science-fiction repository, moves deeply humanistic issues. Scientific hypothesis was for Lem a material,
part of the literary matter. Despite the author's outspoken rationalism, in his
writings we can find places, where the naturalistic voice of the narrator
weaves Gnostic or Kabbalistic threads, in the context of the SF hypotheses(e.g.
Professor Donda; Memoirs Found in a Bathtub seems to be a travesty of
Kafka's novels). The literary image built in such a way is an intertextual play
with the reader. Philosophy served similar function in the works of Borges.
[2] Clive S. Lewis in one of
his books wrote that the angels live among us, but they move so fast that we
are unable to notice them.
[1] Krzysztof Ligęza (b. 1979)
– studied at the Pedagogical University of Krakow, Poland. His degree work was
about literature of Stanisław Lem. He lives and works in Wyskitna, to which he
came back from the United Kingdom, where he worked and lived for the last few
years. The landscape is a favourite area of his creative activities. His works
were presented during a few solo and group shows in Poland and the United
Kingdom: Presence among the absent (Gorlice, 2013); Land-scapes
(Kraków, 2012); Biennial of the Mountain Photography (Jelenia Góra,
2012); Romantic (Kraków, 2012); The iconosphere of non-obviousness
(Rabka-Zdrój, 2011); Landscape Photographer of the Year 2010 (London,
2010); Wanderlust Travel Photo of the Year 2009 (London &
Birmingham, 2010).
