A lecture of the Bydgoszcz Academy of Art
Today’s public space is extremely diverse and diversified in terms of its shape and development. Art plays an important role in this place, enriching its symbolic and aesthetic layer, evoking reflections, associations and emotions, promoting specific values and phenomena, and often becoming an identification sign of a specific place. The greatest influence on changes in the landscape and our surroundings, their social character, is exerted by sculptures and their special category: monuments and unconventional spatial installations. They fulfil a wide range of cultural, urban, decorative and recreational tasks and missions. They commemorate important historical events; we erect them to pay tribute to people of merit. What are they like? Traditional, conservative? Modern, controversial? Realistic, abstract?
The lecture will deal with outdoor sculptures, defined as a kind of artistic expression on specific meanings and situations, places, times, interpersonal relations. Blended into the space of Polish towns and cities, the native landscapes fill the external world of man and become social facts. They are simple and raw, decorative and colourful, banal and intriguing. They are surprising, sometimes shocking, and often cheerful. Bold and controversial, they compose interestingly with the historic architectural space, create modern territories reflecting our aspirations and dreams, encourage people to positive actions and behaviours, awaken artistic sensitivity.

Jerzy Brukwicki (1945) – art critic, curator of exhibitions, journalist. Long-standing head of the “Pokaz” Critics’ Gallery in Warsaw. In the 1980s, the author of dozens of independent exhibitions, such as Polish Pieta, A Time of Sadness, A Time of Hope, Presence, Against Evil, Against Violence. Organised individual exhibitions for Tadeusz Brzozowski, Wojciech Kołyszko, Paweł Kowalewski, Jerzy Medyński, Antoni Rodowicz, Ryszard Stryjecki, Andrzej Wajda and others, graphics art of “Solidarity”. Editor and publisher of the independent culture magazine “Wybór”, the editor of the underground magazine “Przegląd Wiadomości Agencyjnych” (PWA), collaborated with publishing houses NOWA, Przedświt, Pokolenie.
Bydgoszcz Academy of Art
16.11.2016, 6pm
20 Gdańska St.