"What could our animals say about happiness if they could do so? How do they feel about our city? Give them a voice!
Their silent, patient, meaningful and friendly gazes weigh over the emergence of images and the meaning of words. For the past 4 years, I have been watching closely how human-animal relations in Krakow have blossomed, I have spent a lot of time with the dogs, through them I have got to know the city and those who have invited me into their world. Dogs were the friends of my childhood, which I spent in the countryside, I couldn't imagine living with them in the city - I saw it as a cultural place, far from nature.
The backdrop to our dog walks is nature, the sky, but also the hovering, silent, unnoticeable by anyone from here, the sightseeing balloon. After all, the balloon in the 18th century changed the way people thought about space. Soaring above heads, the flying banya required taming crowds with new phenomena. Balloon flights attracted people and became a pretext for comment and discussion. This is how I want the Blonie to be seen today as a place of symbiosis between animals and people.
Observations and thoughts of this kind became the inspiration for the watercolours of Krakow's quadrupeds in green space.
We invite you to the exhibition (dogs also welcome) The Unbearable Lightness of dogs. On canine happiness.
The theme of this exhibition is the lightness of four-legged animals, I mean both the daily, unquenchable urge to play with our pets and the natural beauty that their movement conceals. Just stepping out of the house and looking at them makes you feel lighter; on walks we lose the burden of a tiring day at work, the burden of memory, of culture. The work on the exhibition was also accompanied by conversations about re-reading Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Karenin's bitch winding up the clock of Tomasz and Teresa's days, but also mine.
Walking with the dogs, I surrender to their beauty, find a point of reflection, and painting with watercolours not only stops this movement in the picture, but I free myself from the burden of thought, purify myself and rediscover the lightness of life. Lightness also has its own weight."
The exibition will last until 12th May.
