Janusz BAŁDYGA 2014 / Robert KUŚMIROWSKI
THE AXIS OF RETURN 360O THE AXIS OF RETREAT 2022
Forecourt of the Centre for Culture in Lublin
12 Peowiaków Street
free-standing object
Janusz Bałdyga – born in 1954 in Lublin. Studied at the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (1974-79) with a diploma in the atelier of Prof. S. Gierowski. Performer, author of installations, objects, spatial installations, drawings and public actions. Together with Jerzy Onuch and Łukasz Szajna, he founded the group Pracownia (Workshop; 1976-81), which included such works as: ‘Volkswagen 300’ (1976), ‘Comment I-V’ (1976-78), ‘Unidentified Activity’ (1978) or ‘Nine Possibilities’ (1979). He has been a member of the Academy of Movement theatre since 1979. He conducts an original didactic programme in the form of workshops and lectures. He currently lectures at the University of Arts in Poznań. Janusz Bałdyga’s first performance was ‘Generał Center’. It took place at the Dziekanka Studio in 1981. It was clearly political in tone and referred to the then current situation in Poland and the problem of dictatorship. Bałdyga’s works made in the first half of the 1980s are a manifestation of an uncompromising attitude and political commitment. They also show a broader horizon of interests, being a determinant of his further artistic path. In these works we are dealing with the tradition of the constructivist avant-garde and conceptual motifs combined with the world of symbols, which gives the artist’s works a metaphysical and ritualistic character. The language of Bałdyga’s works is characterised by austerity of form and simplicity. The aesthetics of expression are very austere, and the artist uses ordinary materials or simple objects, such as ropes, wooden beams or planks, to construct his message. Added to this are elements with symbolic meaning: wine glasses, water jars, circles. Bałdyga uses the physical properties of objects and materials – their inertia and tension – to formulate the message.
