Paganus

What is Paganus?

The idea to present a display documenting the work of several young artists active in the countryside was born even before their first meeting was decided on. There was no plan or a mission statement to give a context, apart from the simple idea of gathering a number of AoFA students in a village, in a barn belonging to Łagowski’s parents – for “activity”.

In order to write the conception of the exhibition required by the director of the Gallery of that time – Iwona Bigos – Łagowski made an intuitive suggestion: “Paganus”, meaning a pagan, somebody uninitiated, lacking certain knowledge, a stranger or outsider. And the director took the risk and included the exhibition within the programme framework on the basis of just a few sentences drafted on a sheet of paper.

Therefore, to build a narration about and around the display, the easiest strategy would be to follow the definition: the word “paganus” itself is rich enough in its etymology and potential contemporary interpretations to provide a good background to deliberate over the artists / naïve savages, who try to scratch something together in this oddly indifferent, static and stubbornly silent area – the countryside.

Indeed, this is also what the exhibition is about.

However, “Paganus” is more than that. It is also one of the “projects” emerging in dozens of cultural institutions across the country with the intention of opening a slot in various environments and “spaces” of towns and cities, in order to tell a story, attract attention and, in the best-case scenario, to introduce some change.

One could risk the statement that „Paganus” deconstructs the logic ruling the so-called “project” because, as a matter of fact, it is one itself – with the mechanism of raising funds and settling accounts in relevant institutions or following the process of approving the proposal and including it in the Gallery’s budget at least one year in advance. Whatever difficulties need to be overcome, real costs paid, goals achieved or failures faced, the invoices still need to be submitted, the work resulting in tangible effects – done. Even if the latter was “a screwed-up tissue dumped on the floor”.

The reason why various projects are born is not because they are tangible processes firmly rooted in a specific time and space or because they result from concrete premises and conditions. A project appears out of nowhere, like an invader, appropriating and presenting the space and its inhabitants. The “Paganus” project, which in the end was a failure, especially when compared with the last year’s high-flown assumptions presented to Iwona Bigos, also demonstrates the clumsiness and incapability of artists acting within the rural context. It disproves not only the naïve enthusiasm of the barbarians rendering “projects” but the effects of their activity as well.

We are pagans ourselves and therefore we roll up leaves of green tissue paper. We cut out flowers from construction paper. And we hang them from the Gallery’s ceiling. It is not an accusation pointed at an insincere idyll of the countryside. Neither is it the hipster-like rot of AoFA students absorbed in creating bio art. It is just what it is: leaves made of tissue paper. This is precisely what we are involved in just now.