The Things We Buried Grow

Much has been said about the existential aspects of Magdalena Abakanowicz’s work – the isolation of the individual, the alienation in a crowd, the emptiness of a body devoid of a soul. Scholars primarily focus on the human being as the center of her artistic practice. Meanwhile, Abakanowicz’s art reaches much deeper – to the sources of loneliness, to its root cause, which can be found in the individual’s separation from nature. Humans, or rather their outlines, contours, become mere transmitters of a deeply moving truth, hidden beneath the surface, buried under the accumulating layers of history and time. However, the earth has a way of returning things – pushing them back to the surface. 
This mythological “primordial time” is revealed in the works of Bartłomiej Flis – a time when humans were part of the world around them, without hierarchy, without divisions between animate and inanimate, without longing and emptiness. Suspended in an undefined space, the figures of gentle giants represent times long gone, times yet to come, or perhaps those that never happened. 

The exhibition “The Things We Buried Are Growing” will feature sculptures by Magdalena Abakanowicz and a new series of paintings by Bartłomiej Flis.