“Closed Time" - new exhibition at the 2nd Floor Gallery
The concept of time is the subject of consideration not only by scientists and philosophers, but also by artists who try to understand it. “Closed Time" is an exhibition devoted to reflection on time and its phenomena. It can be seen from June 27 in the 2nd Floor Gallery in the Centre of New Technologies of the Silesian University of Technology.
Time is the measure we use to determine the sequence of events or phenomena. We notice its passage and try to express it as precisely as possible, using number systems. But is the concept of time as simple as it may seem? It has been the subject of philosophers' considerations since ancient times. It remains a puzzle for scientists to this day.
Time also became the topic of the creators of the "Closed Time" exhibition: Dominique Jerzak, Gabriela Piłat, Dobrawa Maria Radziwiłł, Stefania Skłodowska, Kacper Sobczyk and Marta Tokarz from the student collective of the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice. The works can be viewed in the 2nd Floor Gallery in the Centre of New Technologies of the Silesian University of Technology. The opening will take place on June 27 at 18:00.
The works collected around the theme of the exhibition are an attempt to explore time and in-depth reflection on its features - its dimensionality and illusory nature. Time, understood as the fourth, non-spatial dimension, is no longer merely an experimental duration, an extending axis with one vector. Enclosing it in the planes of one's own experiences and memories makes it a great medium not only for memory, but perhaps above all for the accompanying feelings, reflections and acquired prejudices, habits and associations. The past does not appear as an endless line of what was, but rather a series of interconnected frames in which each individual manages to capture its essence. The future, however, is only an extrapolation of the appearance of these rooms towards futuristic fantasies, the act of sitting in rooms slowly filling with a reinterpretation of what was into what will be. The present is therefore not a point on the map of this concept, it is the act of deciphering and defining it.
The artists presented at the exhibition believe in the convergence of the perception of a work of art with the perception of time enclosed in the conceptual spaces. Objects become windows into the cells of closed time, allowing you to take a look at past traumas, paths taken, and tears shed for both suffering and happiness. One look may sometimes be enough for the entire store of values, feelings and loose associations to flow in a stream of consciousness from one time centre to another. If time is a medium of memories, it is a closed medium, trapped in a prison of its own neurons. Art is its release, one of the possibilities of sharing experiences, fragmenting them, multiplying them and taming them. It allows you to overcome time when you encounter such a need, to give yourself to it another time and share with it another property - undeniable transience, lack of meaning from a non-human perspective. Since no work will be more durable than time itself, no painting will capture its entirety, they can only try to enslave a part of it and give it to the viewer with a lying promise of eternity. But perhaps this is the only eternity we can approach.
Dominique Jerzak
