Wojciech Wilczyk: Holy War

Wojciech Wilczyk completed the project Holy War In the years 2009-2014 in Krakow, Łódź and Upper Silesian conurbation. The artist photographed graffiti created by football fans. The latest project aroused a lot of interest before its premiere. In this catalogue, we publish texts written especially on the occasion of the exhibition in Atlas Sztuki by prof. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Dr. Anna Zawadzka and Dr. Adam Mazur. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir in her text analyzes Wilczyk's latest project through the prism of Old Polish tumults instited by young boys in Latin referred to by Father Piotr Skarga as Pueri. Anna Zawadzka in her essay draws our attention to the political dimension of fan graffiti, writing that "fan graffiti is also access to urban space. No one with such stubbornness, consistency and dedication as fans implements the "right to the city" that city activists talk about. The effort put into preparing the graffiti project and painting it, the money put into the paints, the time invested in fan activity, the risk of being punished for "vandalism" and damage to health when painting at heights and in hard-to-reach places - all this as part of free work for the community, changing urban space, caring for the immediate environment. In his text, Adam Mazur analyzes not only Holy War, but also other previous projects carried out by the artist. 

When preparing Wojciech Wilczyk's previous project, The innocent eye does not exist, in addition to the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, we decided to publish an album containing all the project's works. Due to the high interest in a few months, the first edition of the book was exhausted and the publication lived to see the second edition. In the case of Holy War Also due to the multidimensionality and importance of the project, together with the Karakter Publishing House, we published a book edition containing, in addition to the texts published in this catalogue, also a dictionary of entries, symbols, terms and acronyms appearing in photographs prepared by the artist. Album Holy War Contains all the photographs from the artist's latest series. 

After the premiere show at Atlas Sztuki, the project will be shown on February 5, 2015 at the BWA Art Gallery in Olsztyn. Further places of presentation Holy War There will be Galeria Labirynt in Lublin and BWA in Tarnów. I am deeply convinced that the next few years will result in more exhibitions, and the list of presentation venues Holy War Will be at least as long as the list of cities in which the artist's previous project was shown The innocent eye does not exist.