how, a few years after the war, do women’s calves became socialist in content, yet still alluring in form over a few seasons? Do you want to understand better what connects the reticent, cunning Eros with the perspective of streets in Bałuty district? You have to go to this exhibition.
Four small rooms in the old building of the Museum of Art, where it has always been, on the corner of Więckowskiego and Gdańska Street. Seemingly nothing, but a grand exhibition. This is one of the most important exhibitions of the last year, not only in Poland. Don’t overlook, don’t miss, the kind of childlike “One-Eyed Devil”. The kind that the one twenty-something Nowosielski drew for the Puppet Theater in the city of Łódź, where he arrived in 1950, looking for work and a place to anchor himself in the still wildly alien post-war reality.
Nowosielski’s anniversary year ended a fortnight ago, so it’s time to look at his paintings in private, on a serious level.
It is unlikely to end with a single visit.
Too many threads, too many enlightenments, too many seemingly distant phenomena (e.g., socialist realism and sincere holiness, as it outlined on an icon) have managed to fit and reveal themselves in these small rooms by the curators – Paulina Kurc-Maj and Julianna Goździk. And, if you’ve still never seen (in a city as cinematic as Łódź this is almost impossible, but guests from the capital and surrounding areas are also invited) a solid, orthodox iconostasis with the forgotten, authentic Polish Film Chronicle of the era in place of the Tsarist gates, you must be in Łódź at Nowosielski’s exhibition.
Not to snob on the vast cultural life, but to begin to understand anything about this city, to learn how and what connects the perspective of the street with your so carefully encrypted intimate privacy.
Nowosielski painted a lot of strange portraits in even stranger interiors during the twelve years he spent in Łódź. It’s impossible to get out of the labyrinth that every city tries – on waking and in its dreams – to be, without a few silent lessons in attentive observation.
Take your family, your favorite pet, your favorite phone, or ultimately go there completely alone. Go all in. In front of such a strange iconostasis, perhaps the first film iconostasis in the world (slightly schismatic), „something”, or „someone” will bump into you unexpectedly.
Someone who sees more than the One-eyed Devil. You’ll see for yourself.
In orthodoxy, an iconostasis, the door within it is door behind which waits what is not seen in everyday life, what is mysterious. A fulfillment and joy beyond telling awaits.
In such circumstances, in such a space, everything might suddenly „unlock” (and in Łódź, like in Poznań, many things were locked and unlocked day by day), open up.
Suddenly, what seemed inaccessible becomes open.
There is no guarantees (after all, it’s a Museum of Art), but many things may unexpectedly lighten up in your mind. Not everything will be as clear as the Sun, but the rectangle of the great blue might stay close to your thoughts for longer.
We will keep coming back to this exhibition, life in Łódź teaches us to not waste an opportunity.
Since someone managed to notice how a doubting orthodox from Lesser Poland, who followed for the woman of his life to Łódź, soberly and lucidly noted the incomprehensible energy and symbolism of a rather seemingly bland space, one must humbly, standing in silence in front of neither a screen nor an iconostasis, try to become accustomed to one’s own ability for illumination.
If you’re lucky and you like it, who knows, sooner or later, one of your private projections may win an Oscar.
