The Foto-Medium-Art gallery will hold the opening of the exhibition The Geometries of Chaos - Archilim, attended by the exhibiting artist Tadeusz Sawa-Borysławski, on 3 July at 6 pm. The photographic objects, installations and textiles presented at the exhibition have been drawn from the cycle The Geometries of Chaos, of which the Archilims are an essential part.

Tadeusz Sawa-Borysławski’s reflections, revealed in his art and theoretical work, are a synthesis of his artistic and scientific comprehension of the world. Sawa-Borysławski has been fascinated by the notion of chaos, its theory and impact on reality, art and architecture. He subjects the environment, perceived as chaos, to order building, structuring processes. The artist, in opposition to the deductionist principle of from general to specific, photographs architectural details: roofs, ornaments, cornices, which, in isolation from the whole composition of the building, become autonomous structures, for use in his later projects. Operating at the margin of the foundational ideas of architectural piece and capturing them through detail, he has created an intriguing method of obtaining material for further transformations. The reused elements may become part of a new and different composition, standing in contradiction to the original or represent an entirely different aesthetic. What is exposed through this specific method, of the framing and the deconstruction of architecture, is lightness and expression replacing monumental classicism, or vice versa. This practice and theory, provided the basis for the works in the series Nantes (2004) which belong to the cycle, initiated back in the 1980s, under the name The Geometries of Chaos.
In the last few years the work and method of Tadeusz Sawa-Borysławski have been expanded through the exploration of the cultural anthropology of Lower Silesia. Wrocław, his birthplace, is a city deeply marked by the maelstrom of history and waves of demographic change. Its memory reaches back only as far as World War II. Its historic monuments, above all its architecture, do not belong to the history of the people who live there. The artist’s fondness for local modernist architecture, which is representative of the highest world achievement in this area, has brought about a new project. Archilims are textiles, tapestries built of the photographs of architectural motifs, arranged into concentric compositions around the principle of kaleidoscopic images. The representations of ferroconcrete capitals, rows of windows or rounded quoins, produced through traditional artistic methods, have become structures, which are entirely dissimilar to their origins and belong to another aesthetic realm. The Archilims are reminiscent of traditional Hutsul tapestries, once popular in Lower Silesia amongst those who resettled from the eastern borderlands. The pieces are named after famous architects, such as Poelzig, Scharoun, Mendelsohn and Zimmermann (2005/2007).

The trend, popular at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries, of building national culture on the basis of folk culture is known in art history as vernacularism. The transformation of the photographed reality of elitist modernism into the compositions of regional character is an unprecedented practice, which reconciles to some extent the dissonance between bourgeois seriousness and folk traditions.

The Archilims have been woven in Lucyna Batko’s workshop in 2007, and they will be presented for the first time at the exhibition in Foto-Medium-Art gallery.

Tadeusz Sawa-Borysławski – (born in 1952) lives and works in Wrocław. He is an architect whose interest lies in applied graphics, drawing and photography. He creates installations and participates in intermedia shows. Sawa- Borysławski is the author of many publications on architecture and modern art. He is a lecturer in the Art Department of the Poznań Academy of Social Science. His work has been presented at numerous individual and group exhibitions. His last show in the Foto-Medium-Art gallery, called Dream, was held in 1987.

The exhibition will be open to public until 8th August 2008.

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