The works presented in the Forma Otwarta gallery were influenced by the only “cosmic monument” in Poland, which was designed for Olesnica by the outstanding Wroclaw sculptor, Jerzy Boron. The brutalist monument was built on the outskirts of the old town in 1972, in the place of a mediaeval moat. Commemorating the modernizing optimism of the first cosmic flight of Yuri Gagarin, its construction was meant to emphasise the newly “recovered” western territories of the Polish People’s Republic as belonging to the sphere of Soviet influence. Over the course of fifty years, the landmark has become a local icon, unconsciously entangled in the global game of imagination and actual political decision.
In the interpretation of Sokolnicka and Geisser, the monumental sculpture of Boroń becomes a starting point to reflect on the gravity of history and the foolish detachment from reality– training aimed at eliminating risk and exploring the potential of non-existent dimensions of reality.
The display takes place in two spaces at Forma Otwarta: the bright one (with a window), and the dark one, (with a projection); material and spectral. In the bright space the artists have gathered works made from a variety of materials—the fragments fitted together “as a test”—sourced from distant visual scales (planetary to the intimate) they align together to exercise newly unveiled mutual connections. Drawings, collages, and assemblages combine snippets of landscapes, architecture, and textures of various materials (including surprising properties like mirror reflections), close-ups of human and non-human figures, abstract elements, and backgrounds composed of geometric shapes and various surfaces. They construct implied choreographies in the eye of the observer, shaped by the local cultural context that is destabilising its constraints. Scraps and snippets of material reality, depicted across countless visual media, come together through a grammar infused with the erudite sense of humour typical of both artists.
The main theme of the works presented in the exhibition is gravity, the key to every flight. Gravity is one of the four fundamental cosmic forces. However, it has yet to be fully integrated into the Standard Model of physics, covering local interactions—electromagnetic, strong, and weak—that bind the atoms of observed material reality; it is gravity that primarily keeps galaxies in a state of relative dynamic balance. Gravitation is an extremely weak force compared to the others, yet remains mysteriously dependent on the mass of visible matter, accumulated through stronger interactions over incomparably smaller distances, and ultimately also on dark matter.
It’s no coincidence that in English, which is the common language for both artists, Kama and Emanuel, like in Latin, the term "gravitas" refers to the weight of issues raised in both local and global conversations. Today, these issues relate to the technological dominance of digital giants, whose power subtly transforms political relationships on macro and also micro scales.
Discoveries in counterintuitive and until recently unobservable phenomena, are leading to fundamental breakthroughs in understanding humanity’s capacity for survival. Surprisingly, this capacity is not tied to the physical force needed to break free from the planet’s gravity. Much more important is the ability to view ecological and socio-political processes on a global scale. Today’s technological revolution is however paradoxically an obstacle that hinders this shift in perspective. That which works on micro-level phenomena– feeding the algorithms of so-called generative artificial intelligence and accumulating into masses of data– replaces what once used to be known as ‘knowledge’ in decision-making processes; while its proponents divert attention from earthly problems, spinning wild cosmic visions.
The titular ground training is therefore nothing more than an exercise in disobedience, the resistance resulting partly from the awareness and partly from the helplessness of individuals in the face of these unclear processes. In the darker part of the exhibition, we are immersed in enigmatic shadows, where the only shimmering guide is Wu, a black dog wandering around the Space-Age monument in Oleśnica. The scene is filmed from Wu’s perspective, a Majorca Shepherd, an outsider both to the cultural context of the space race and the local topography of Oleśnica. As you walk with Wu, remember Beckett’s words: “Use your head, can't you, use your head, you're on earth, there's no cure for that!”