Piotr Ambroziak

Painting by Piotr Ambroziak is a multi-layer journey through human subconsciousness, the world of archetypical symbols and ideas, desires and fears. A walk through an area of cultural determinants, leading to the ego and pre-sources, to what has been unchangeable and primal in the humankind for ages. The exhibition titled “Angels and Aliens” is a kind of a peregrination combined with a search for an answer to the question about the role of a man in the universe, about his free will, about counting on higher powers, about the existence of the Highest Power.

“So far, the humankind has only recognized exclusive worlds of art, how exclusive religions are; our art is the Olympus, where all gods, all civilisations speak to all people who understand the language of art (like science speaks to all those who understand its language…) Each civilization had its sacred places; now, the humankind is discovering ones of its own. […] All of this is combined for the first time in the world, where dying fetishes are granted life they have never known before; and this world of presentations which was juxtaposed with the time by human creation has gained victory over the time for the first time.”¹ This colourful world of beliefs, myths, and legends comes to life owing to paintings by Piotr Ambroziak. Time and space are of no importance here; what is the most important is the element which decides about our humanity, spirituality, handed over like a life-giving spark. Like overlapping photographic plates of consciousness, the paintings summon our demons and desires to connect with the Creator, to fill the mysterious emptiness and loneliness here, on earth. Angels and aliens, extra-terrestrial beings, messengers who connect the real with the supernatural. Dr Michael Rappenglueck found the image of the sky from almost 17,000 years before in images of animals and hunting scenes covering the Lascaux caves. Our ancestors also turned their eyes to the sky, which, for them, was inhabited by animals and spirits-guides. This is the first planetarium known to us, the evidence of longing after things that are mystic and impenetrable.

For the modern civilization, the beings living in the outer space are transformed mythic powers, the religion dressed in robes of modernity, the legend of a civilisation….

Marta Kowalewska – art historian, curator of exhibitions, university teacher. The author of a series of interviews with eminent Polish artists, including Stefan Gierowski, Wojciech Fangor, Stanisław Fijałkowski, Roman Opałka, and Gustaw Zemła, and critical works published in professional journals and exhibition catalogues.