Gardens
Zachęta — National Gallery of Art / WARSAW (Poland)
15.08.2015 – 04.10.2015

The genesis of the exhibition lies in the educational activities of the Zachęta, which opens art to people whose contact with it may be restricted, either for social reasons or those of, for example, eyesight or hearing. It was born on an impulse, thinking about how art can influence the viewer. This exhibition has been put together for all art lovers willing to abandon traditional ways of seeing. Come inside, close your eyes and open your ears… Thinking about the exhibition, which can be enjoyed regardless of sense impairments, it is worth considering what it means to ‘see’ a work of art. What is the role of the different senses in the perception of reality, and the reality created by artists? Vision has always had a privileged position in the process of cognition. To see means as much as knowing, but also understanding and believing. Vision still plays a major role in art — this applies in particular to contemporary art in the 21st century, dominated as it is by digital media. No matter how much we would like to open up to other type of experience, there is no way diminish its role. But to what extent does vision limit us in our contact with art?
The exhibition abolishes the principle of ‘do not touch’ and reduces the physical distance between the viewer and the art. In the reception of paintings, installations, and objects exhibited here, vision is equally as helpful as hearing, smell, touch, and a sense of movement. Materiality and sensuality lies at their essence. Visitors are encouraged to touch, both visually, as well as their hands, smell, listen, tread on the art and climb on it — in accordance with the ‘instruction manual’ prepared by the artists. Invited artists use materials clearly associated with nature: sand, rocks, peat, beeswax, grass, wicker, live plants, branches, and mushrooms. Their installations have size, weight and volume, they generate sounds and emit odours. In a sense, the exhibition draws on the experience of sensory gardens, designed to deliberately stimulate all of the senses. It resembles an invitation to a secret garden — with hidden secrets, meandering memories and delights, a labyrinth between the real and the metaphor, a garden suspended between the worlds of emotion and reason.

Curated by Magdalena Godlewska-Siwerska in collaboration on the part of Zachęta with Julia Leopold

Photocredit: Marek Krzyżanek (on license CC BY-SA)