Tomasz Kowalski
Delirious Szczebrzeszyn

29.05–17.07.2021

Summer 2020, foggy village. People gather outside. Lost in delirium, they look at the sky. They can finally see clearly. A plot of serfdom land becomes just a crumb of one of the planets.

New works on paper were created by Tomasz Kowalski in the summer of 2020 in Szczebrzeszyn. At the time the artist was reading about ergot – a fungus, once called “St. Anthony’s Fire”, that attacks wheat crops. Eating bread baked from flour poisoned with ergot would cause madness and hallucinatory trance.

Kowalski’s drawings are simple, but always to the point. Succinct lines, subdued, faded colors, give the impression of certain things left unsaid. A lonely figure bends over and tries to adapt to the dynamically changing gravity. Straw-wrap figures symbolizing the restlessness of inanimate matter. Motifs that the artist revisited throughout his career return yet again.