{"id":27278,"date":"2018-02-16T11:45:15","date_gmt":"2018-02-16T10:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ggm.gda.pl\/?p=27278"},"modified":"2024-07-30T11:51:15","modified_gmt":"2024-07-30T09:51:15","slug":"bestiary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ggm.gda.pl\/en\/27278\/bestiary\/","title":{"rendered":"Bestiary"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Artists:<\/strong> Rafa\u0142 Wilk, Basia Ba\u0144da, Zofia Gramz, Irena Kalicka, Czekalska + Golec, Katarzyna Kozyra, Wojciech Doroszuk, Art Spiegelman, G\u00fcnter Grass<\/p>

Curators:<\/strong> Anna Ciabach, Marta Wr\u00f3blewska<\/span><\/p>

Place:<\/strong> G\u00fcnter Grass Gda\u0144sk Gallery<\/span><\/p>

Exhibition:<\/strong> 16.02-06.05.2018<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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We are no animals, and the concept of being human, as we understand it, we will never probably achieve. And although we are no animals, we are worse than them. Animals kill only when defending themselves or hungry, but always for a reason or if needed. People kill for no reason. They kill because of their faith and ideology.<\/span> <\/em><\/p>

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G\u00fcnter Grass [in:] G<\/em>\u00fc<\/em>nter Grass and Polish Don Quixote, <\/em>written and collected by Maria Janion, s\u0142owo\/obraz\/terytoria, Gda\u0144sk 1999, p. 27.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Bestiary<\/em> is an illuminated book depicting real and fantastic beasts accompanied by commentaries didactic in their nature. Our Bestiary <\/em>is a collection of works by contemporary artists where animal motifs appear as metaphors related to human character traits, situations and emotions.<\/p>

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An attempt to describe \u2018our\u2019 world through symbolic reference to the world of fauna has an extremely long tradition going back to primal religious rites and first cosmogonies, for animals are biological beings closest to us, and yet distant enough to transfer onto them what is unclear and disturbing, and less often beautiful and fascinating in ourselves.<\/p>

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In the works by G\u00fcnter Grass that were the starting point for this exhibition, the animal imagery appears often and plays an important part. His literary and artistic world is filled with dogs, rats, fish, birds and representatives of other species which create their own microcosm parallel to the human one. Grass\u2019s bestiary is however more like protagonists of Grimm’s Fairy Tales <\/em>than Aesop’s didactic fables. His drawings and graphics might also bring to one\u2019s mind the works of North European masters of Medieval bestiaries.<\/p>

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In contemporary art animal symbolism is still present, although it appears on different levels of representation, providing a wide range for interpretation.<\/p>

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On the one hand, artists choose to depict animals in order to tell a story of oppression from political and social systems, although long ago we already realised that the most cruel species, also to its own representatives, is man. In Rafa\u0142 Wilk\u2019s work, entitled Hero, <\/em>a snail on a razorblade symbolises both the ability of people survive the times of the Holocaust, as well as falling victim of mindless \u2018games\u2019 of the offenders. Art Spiegelman\u2019s comic book, Maus,<\/em> is already a classic metaphor of the Holocaust.<\/p>

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The story of human relations is also distinct in Basia Ba\u0144da\u2019s installation, He Burned Down a Stable Full of Horses in Revenge for a Rabbit, <\/em>where attachment and longing intertwines with a need for revenge and cruelty.<\/p>

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The world of fauna is also inseparably connected with the field of sexuality and hidden perversions. They can take place at home, as in Irena Kalicka\u2019s series of photographs entitled Table Top Theatre, <\/em>or can be grotesque in their nature, as in Katarzyna Kozyra\u2019s video, Entry of LouSalom\u00e9.<\/em><\/p>

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In art, there are also private menageries, everyday bestiaries where, as in Zofia Gramz\u2019s drawings, animals and hybrids ironically describe ordinary stories of city life.<\/p>

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There is also a different possibility for looking at animals: they can be regarded as autonomous beings having their own traits without the need of judging them from the human perspective as good or bad. In the cycle of photos of the duet Czekalska\/Golec, entitled Catwalk, <\/em>the main protagonist is a lonely white cat exploring human or natural spaces at night. Although we can sometimes barely see it, we realise that our access to its world is very limited, and our feeling of superiority as a species \u2013 disputable. Let us just consider the abilities of cat sight that works perfectly in the dark\u2026<\/p>

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Or perhaps cats and other animals know of us, people, a lot more than we think, and a lot more than we know about ourselves?<\/p>

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Artists: Rafa\u0142 Wilk, Basia Ba\u0144da, Zofia Gramz, Irena Kalicka, Czekalska + Golec, Katarzyna Kozyra, Wojciech Doroszuk, Art Spiegelman, G\u00fcnter Grass Curators: Anna Ciabach, Marta Wr\u00f3blewska Place: G\u00fcnter Grass Gda\u0144sk Gallery Exhibition: 16.02-06.05.2018 We are no animals, and the concept of being human, as we understand…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27280,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[97],"class_list":["post-27278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-4g-en","tag-single-photo"],"acf":{"data_rozpoczecia":"20180216","data_zakonczenia":"20180506","miejsce":"4G"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ggm.gda.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ggm.gda.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ggm.gda.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ggm.gda.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ggm.gda.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27278"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ggm.gda.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27284,"href":"https:\/\/ggm.gda.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27278\/revisions\/27284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ggm.gda.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ggm.gda.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ggm.gda.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ggm.gda.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}