“Lumen”

The series “Lumen” was created in the years 2012-2019, but its genesis dates back to the early 1980s, when I took pictures at the Center for Theater Practices in Gardzienice during the performance of “Awwakum”, on the most sensitive negative at that time. For several dozen years, the prints remained in my archive, undergoing subtle, chemical changes. After so long, I looked at them from a different perspective, creating new compositions, searching for the luminous essence, emerging from the darkness of negatives and history.

The series consists of 28 black and white graphics in the giclee art print technique, in the format 50 x 70 cm, with an edition of 5 copies each.

Bogusław Deptuła
“Lumen, or candlelight”

Getting out of the darkness, facing the eyes, making visible, is creating anew, creating. The dramatic light of a candle, disperses the darkness, but only on a small piece, the power of the light is limited, wobbly, calculating, invariably endangered; a narrow circle of life among the immensity of greedy dark nothingness; one stronger blast and nothingness is enough again.

Absolute darkness, we can somehow imagine it, because we have experienced it more than once in different moments of our lives. And what about the other side, absolute brightness? We can’t imagine this one, because it would be a state of blindness, meaning another not seeing, deadly, excessive shine, dissolving, disappearing another, because in brightness.

This is all that is between the two absolute ones is an area of our everyday life, but also of our exploration of art. But there is no need to deceive oneself, the most interesting is the thin line between the visible and the invisible. These shapes are not yet fully recognizable, but emerge from the light, drawing before a lost, uncertain gaze.
This is how Leszek Mądzik’s productions were created, trapped in darkness, tortured by sounds of unknown origin, seemingly safe, because in some theatrical space, but not at the same time. Light scattered, on the border of the visible and not giving certainty about the emerging forms and shapes and slow events we witnessed.

Włodzimierz Staniewski created his performances differently, making the candle an almost equal actor in his performance ” Awwakum”. The visible appears only in a narrow circle of the candle. Dramatically, but also uncertainly. The candle is significantly embedded in a loaf of bread, a life-giving candlestick, a vessel of light, dispersing the darkness.

Such were Antoni Rodowicz’s photographs capturing this phenomenon of momentary dispersion of darkness, ephemeral dramatic brightness, uncertain brightness, limited, one-sided, but thus very spectacular, triumphant. First, there were pictures taken at the show in 1984, and years later the spectacular graphic series “Lumen” was created from them.