The Parallax and the Gaze of Zbigniew Rogalski

October 28, 2010 — January 30, 2011

ms, Wieckowskiego 36

The exhibition will be an overview of Zbigniew Rogalski’s work from his earliest paintings to the recent objects. The show will not be a retrospective but rather a thematic exhibition focused on persistent motive of Rogalski’s work, that is, on transforming the gaze. Having great technical skills and inventive capacities, he is able to propose visual experiments that overcome or sometimes even reverse the classical painterly concept of perspective. Rogalski invents new ways of seeing, that can be called the parallax, corresponding to the current developments in technology, science and culture.

The exhibition will not only gather works by Rogalski to illustrate his visual inventions. Through their juxtaposition the show will create a unique visual experience where the gaze will be revealed in connection with desire, longing, fantasy and death. The exceptional feature of Rogalski’s painting is that the gaze is embodied in them as truly painterly matter. One may say that the gaze is materialized in his paintings.

Rogalski’s work can be seen as a visual counterpart for some contemporary theoretical concepts especially that of Slavoj Žižek (The Parallax View, 2006), Jacques Lacan (The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 1977) and Paul Virilio (Vision machine, 1994). It is not in any case a mere illustration, it is rather an important contribution on its own, posing questions and proposing solutions by visual means.

And finally, and maybe foremost, Zbigniew Rogalski’s exhibition will be a great pleasure of painting for the viewers at the same time confronting them with the piercing gaze of contemporary art.

curator: Jaroslaw Lubiak