There is a Pain Somewhere in the Room

 ‘There is a pain somewhere in the room’ is a quotation from “Awakenings”, a book by Oliver Sacks. These are the  words of a  patient from a neurological ward. Finding the source and location of pain was a problem for him, since – as a result of a stroke – he had lost the sense of the limits of his body. I was often inspired by the quotes of Sacks’ patients. There are numerous ontological concepts there, which provide one with a plenty of food for thought in terms of art objects and films.

[WB]

In his works Wojciech Bąkowski combines the image, the sound and the text into a coherent, indivisible whole with the aim to create – as he says – “a unity in diversity”. The aesthetics of his works is minimalist, bereft of unnecessary elements which could blur the meaning and the gist of the message. The main fabric for Bąkowski’s works is the reality – built from the immediate environment and the everyday life: the living space limited by the square metres of the flat, determined by the shape of the furniture and objects of everyday use, filled with the sounds of life of its inhabitants. Hence in his works the presence of such elements as a block of flats, a bathroom door, the sounds from the TV set or from the kitchen. These abstracted and transformed “daily grind ingredients”, which we know so well, create a picture of an individual artist’s experience – ‘This is exactly the stuff which, although seemingly less important, actually becomes the main topic’.

There Is a Pain Somewhere in the Room is Bąkowski’s first exhibition in Lublin. The presented sound installations and objects – Various Turns of Tuesday and Ruling a Piece of Night, among others – are the artist’s latest works.