The Great Herbarium of meadows, fields and forests | Wiesław Napierała; Tear | Izabela Grudzińska

The Great Herbarium of meadows, fields and forests | Wiesław Napierała
Tear | Izabela Grudzińska
Gallery Curators’LAB, 12 Nowowiejskiego Str.
Opening: 14.12.2023, 18:00
14.12.2023 – 7.01.2024

“The Great Herbarium of meadows, fields and forests”

Wandering around places that we condescendingly call nature, in which we see the components of flora and fauna, satisfies to some extent our basic needs of being in the bosom of this so-called nature, so to speak. And so much banality, familiar from most of the cries of a consumer community devoid of lower revolutionary states, which is between ingesting a new gadget and swallowing another assortment of spinning objects, made to us by miraculous marketing and advertising processes.
Nature, nature, nature and we, its defenders in our perverse logic of events, are actually destroyers.
Just an accusation, simple and pretentious, in which I participate as the perpetrator, with minimal possibility of doing anything positive in this matter.
Our desires, desires and once again desires regarding changes, improvement and saving spring mornings, the flights of the troublemaker bumblebee, the exhalation of the toad’s breath, the attentive gliding of the always hungry lesser spotted eagle, the barn owl, insects, insects and their handsome bites, the wonderful swelling given as a gift by mosquitoes in love with us.
Creams, sweet berry jams, a nap in a meadow smelling of wild boar and deer, fear of the trajectory of bird shit and a rumor told by Indian summer about how summer and autumn will skillfully align.
Because this dazzling web of parallel existences is passing, passing, passing and maybe we will not be able to hold in our paws the bright warmth of the rainbow-colored morning, born in the diamonds of dew left by the angel from the candy box. And all this levitating rainbow wave of plant and animal nature, which we ourselves erase out of jealousy for mystical influences, pupating into the proverbial bag of sawdust. But as a reward for such wickedness, we will stand at the gates of Dante’s hell, and Dante’s circle will simply take away from us hope, hope, hope abandoned by pride, and the third and a half ice age in a row will not warm our sinful soul stuck in this same Dante’s pit, punishments without redemption.
It is we, deprived of the present tense, unrealistic and extremely incompetent, turning good education for nature into bad, one sense away from noticing the first truths and elementary feelings, who are doomed to homogenization and utilization, without the possibility of honorable destruction.
This spectacle about the passing and dying of nature was created for us by us, but the curtain ending the performance will be without an audience.
However, nature will survive and will not encode us in memories, because its structure in its archetypal juices has no memory of particles of human imperative, and the little people will spin like a corkscrew from sour wine. And so much blackness, because it still exists for a while, and the time before extinction is our common representative of wrongs and slander hurled from the pulpit.
I have decided, by resolution, that I will sanctify the greatness and power of nature in its immeasurable holiness and intentional prayer.
And because I consider it a fully aristocratic form of being, the true one, reaching its aristocratic roots in the overwhelming nobility of its nature. In what was extremely great, it became small for us to equate our ancient, enormous love with our naive, local pursuit of love here and there.
And since a coat of arms would be the best solution and an honor that would be completely appropriate to the rank of being that nature reveals to us in its warm and cuddly fur, so I did.
Photography became my tool to achieve this goal.
Then I used traditional analog films for this honorable task, because the natural combines with what comes from nature. And the coat of arms itself was created as a result of repeated photographic exposure, duplicating in its vortex meadows, fields, clouds, lakes and everything that crawls, flies, runs and swims between them, together with me and with those who want it.

Izabela Grudzińska
Polish visual artist, born in 1990 in Radziejow. Graduate of Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts Poznan. Throughout her studies (2011-2016), she studied under the supervision of prof. Dr. hab. Wiesław Napierała, gaining knowledge and experience of small sculptural forms. The effects of many years of work resulted in the defense of the bachelor’s degree entitled “Slaughter Horse” in 2014 and master’s diploma entitled “Polish Hunting Dog”, which was nominated for the 37th edition of the Maria Dokowicz Competition. Winner of the Special Prize of the 3rd Biennial of Small Sculpture Form. Awarded the Rector’s Scholarship for the best students. Since 2017, she has been a lecturer at her alma mater. In addition to her duties related to the University of the Arts Poznan, she runs her own business in a private studio, where she develops her passion for foundry and other sculptural works. From an early age, the artist has been interested in animal themes, trying to capture the beauty of animals using various media. Initially it was painting and photography, then a poster, currently a sculpture. For over ten years, she has been engrossed in her passion for foundry and patination, working mainly with brass, bronze and aluminum. Participant of many individual and collective exhibitions, both in Poland and abroad.