On the 27th of March at 6:00 pm the Foto-Medium Art Gallery in Kraków will hold the opening of an exhibition entitled Lost Space presenting the works of Jerzy Olek. During the opening, Krzysztof Ciesielski, Zdzisław Pogoda, Witold Szymański and also the artist will deliver speeches. The exhibition is dedicated to Michał Heller.

Jerzy Olek has been exploring the issue of the spatiality of the image, the visibility of objects, and the potentiality and limits of cognition for almost two decades. The artistic method he applies gives priority to questions rather than answers. In his examination of these topics he draws from mathematics, non-Euclidean geometry, psychophysiology and cosmology.
The works in the exhibition make use of photography, a medium which always, since the very beginning, has been wrestling with space. This issue of space was also vital in the Neo-Avant-Garde period, especially in conceptual photography, a trend, in which Olek was very active as an artist and propagator. Years of research have led artists to conclude that photography does not record reality in its entirety. Apart from sensuous reality there is also “non-retinal” reality which art can explore–and which Jerzy Olek’s fertile imagination describes in hundreds of ways. The illusory space he creates is very complex, difficult to interpret and impossible to see in full. But Olek proves its existence – after all, he has given it a shape and description.
The series Lost Space (2008) consists of triptychs: two photographs and a photo-object (a pyramid). In these works the artist shows how a projected beam of light changes the visual form of objects. The transformation of the shape and structure of a solid object recorded with the camera reveals another truth.
Spiked Form (object: 180-sided stellated polyhedron with 540 triangular photographs, 2008), another work in the exhibition, is a solid shape with 180 spikes. The artist photographed it piece by piece and then glued the photographs onto pointed spikes. He repeated the process hundreds of times. In result, the final construction is a reflection on reflection to the n-th power.
Spiked Form took almost a year of extensive research and then it itself became a starting point for a series of photos and photo-objects (Curved Space, 2008). How did it come into being? Olek photographed fragments of the spiked object, then arranged them in various patterns – shaped them into pyramids and enclosed in elegant black frames. Thus, he rationally arranged chaos–by making fragmented reflections on the whole.
The language of Jerzy Olek’s art is hermetic. It is also universal because it spans the achievements of both art and science. Artists have often been inspired by science. It would be interesting to know if the reverse if also true. Can mathematicians and physicists draw from the experience of art – a branch of knowledge which is free to explore the irrational margin? Jerzy Olek’s exhibition at the Foto-Medium-Art Gallery is a step the artist makes towards crossing the barrier between art and science.

Jerzy Olek (born in 1943), artist and theoretician. Animated the movements of expansive photography, photography as a medium (1970s ) and elementary photography (1980s). Created the “Foto-Medium-Art” programme and gallery. Member and ex-member of editorial boards of “Fotografia”, “European Photography”, “Projekt”, “Art Life”, “Arteon” and “Artluk”. Originator and curator of East-West Photoconferences (1989-1999) and of numerous exhibitions in Poland and abroad. Professor of Fine Arts Academy in Poznań. His cottage in the country houses an international collection of photographic miniatures (the “ef” gallery). Since 1991 has been developing his interdisciplinary artistic project The Dimensionslessness of Illusion based on exhibitions (up till now 100 one-man shows and artistic dialogues) and publications.

Please visit our website at
http://foto-medium-art.com/press/jerzy-olek-lost-space/download/