Zbigniew Libera: Positives and Masters

The Positives series consists of reworkings of widely known photographs that function as symbols in our collective imagination. Using the same rhetoric of pose, Libera changed the photographic convention so that its message became positive. Through the contrast of positive and negative, the artist offers his own subversive, “positive” version of these photographs. The unconditional optimism of the artist’s substitution reaches the viewer only after a moment. It reveals the mechanical nature of a gaze that recognises something that has not, in fact, been depicted at all.

The Masters series was prepared especially for the exhibition at Atlas Sztuki. It consists of interviews with Zofia Kulik, Jan Świdziński, Andrzej Partum, Anastazy Wiśniewski and Leszek Piotrowski that were never conducted or published.