Curator: Magdalena Wiśniowska
Artists: Jakob Gilg, Anka Helfertová, Julia Klemm, Jonathan Penca
In the imaginary conversation with a fascist that I seem to almost daily conduct in my head, I like to present him (my fascist is always a man) the example of an animal, this time of a fish. Deleuze and Guattari describe this fish as being “crisscrossed by abstract lines” - I like to think of the Klunzinger’s Wrasse I saw on a recent trip to Egypt, criss-crossed by a rainbow of colour.
Here it is, I would say, look at this fish, look how beautiful it is, the colours, the design. The pattern doesn’t seem to follow the shape of the fish. There is an orange line across, stripes above, more pink wavy lines around its chubby face. Very bright. But in a certain trick of the light, the fish merges almost completely with its underwater environment. What is abstract, a matter of shape, line and colour, allows the fish to become rock, sand or a bit of coral. As Deleuze and Guattari write “this fish is crisscrossed by abstract lines that resemble nothing, that do not even follow its organic divisions; but thus disorganized, disarticulated, it worlds with the lines of a rock, sand, and plants, becoming imperceptible.”
The fish worlds and when it worlds it becomes imperceptible. It loses itself in the most vibrant way to become unnoticed and thus more firmly part of the world it belongs to. In losing itself it can become everything else.
Magdalena Wiśniowska
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The project ‘Promised Art, or the 2025 exhibition program at Pracownia Portretu’ is being carried out thanks to funding from the City of Łódź budget.