Zbigniew Dłubak, "Untitled", ca. 1948, photograph© Armelle Dłubak, Fundacja Archeologia Fotografii

The exhibition takes a fresh look at the abstract, experimental and little-known works of Zbigniew Dłubak from the 1940s

The abstraction exemplified by Dłubak's Geometries drew its inspiration from the fundamental concepts of 20th Century modernism in painting. In opposition to critics of abstraction in photography, who maintained that the medium's primary role is to preserve traces of reality, Dłubak experimented with ways of manipulating an image through by way of the camera lens, much like in painting or illustration.

The current exhibition presents the Geometries series from the 1940s, along with previously unknown works from the end of that decade, and the Asymmetry series from the 1980s, which picks up his earlier abstract forms. These two distant periods in the artists life are bookends to a practice otherwise devoted to photographic realism. Dłubak also sketched and painted, with his paintings and sketches also taking on an increasingly abstract form as they evolved over the 1950s and 1960s. While Dłubak did not overlap one medium with the other, the presentation of these works together do bring about links and threads that tie his diverse works together as complete portfolio.

Zbigniew Dłubak (1921-2005) was self-taught, studying art on his own during the war and even setting up informal exhibitions while a prisoner at the Mauthausen concentration camp. After the war he achieved significant success as a photographer, rooting his craft in abstraction and, more rarely, constructivism. He tried to step back from the art world in the time of socialist realism, however he did create several works that made him recognised within this movement. In later years, he returned to a more abstract form of photography, painting and illustration.

Curator: Karolina Lewandowska

The exhibition opens on the 7th of February at 7:00 p.m. and runs through the 13th of March, 2012

The Archeology of Photography Foundation Gallery,
Andersa 13, (entrance VII, no. 112)

Source: www.archeologiafotografii.pl