Relief: Island

Le Guern Gallery is pleased to present the fourth edition of its annual sculpture and installation exhibition series in the gallery garden, Relief. This year's edition is centred on the theme of the island, featuring works by Aleksandra Liput, Martyna Pająk, Tomek Baran, Krzysztof Franaszek, Wojciech Gilewicz, Jan Musiałowski, and Paweł Matyszewski.

The island is a motif of remarkable symbolic richness, one that has captivated the imagination of artists across cultures for centuries. Its separateness makes it a model of the world in miniature. Defined by duality, autonomy, and mystery, the island offers fertile ground for both extreme, dynamic phenomena and slow, uninterrupted processes unfolding beyond the reach of external intervention. It can be imagined as a utopian realm, a site where an ideal society might flourish, evoking paradise or a symbolic space of transformation. At the same time, it may become a place of exile or imprisonment. It is a self-contained ecosystem that gives rise to new, endemic forms of life, yet it can also become the epicentre of disease and the relentless death that follows in its wake. Finally, the island emerges as an object of desire, conquest, and occupation, its internal order, often shaped over centuries, violently disrupted.

The selection of works presented in the exhibition draws on the island's inherent duality and autonomy. The exhibited objects engage with historical and imagined narratives, collective and individual experiences, organic processes, and traces of human presence. Rather than offering definitive answers, however, they preserve the island's essential mystery. It is this mystery that allows the island to elude fixed interpretation, remaining instead a space of projection, experience, and continual discovery.