Humans have always been in a deep relationship with the world of plants. The common phytophily probably results directly from the elementary biological dependence deeply imprinted in the human subconscious: plants as the only organisms that can produce organic compounds in photosynthesis are the first and indispensable link in our food chain. It can be assumed that this primordial relationship is the source of eternal fascination, which results in the constant presence of plants in art, literature, science and religion, their fetishization, magical properties attributed to them, and associated rituals.
Today, this immanent, multi-threaded and complex relationship between humans and plants takes on a new form shaped by a number of factors: ideas of post-anthropocentrism and a romantic longing for “return to nature”, symptoms and foreboding of the coming catastrophe, and post-humanist thought, growing awareness: on the one hand constitutive significance of the world of plants, on the other – its wasteful, still unstoppable and destructive exploitation.
The new herbarium (Herbarium novum) shows not only new ways of using plant motifs, new meanings given to them by artists, and new strategies for linking them in art with contemporary issues. It is also a hybrid form, organism different from all previously known – the result of irreversible fusion of culture and nature. A new, surprising and unrecognized creation. Efflorescence on the original, clean and healthy body of nature.

Artists: Marta Antoniak, Bogusław Bachorczyk, Przemysław Branas, Maciej Chodziński, Paweł Dunal, Maurycy Gomulicki, Magdalena Hueckel, Edyta Hul, Elżbieta Jabłońska, Janusz Janczy, Kornel Janczy, Marcin Janusz, Konrad Juściński, Leszek Knaflewski, Bartosz Kokosiński, Diana Lelonek, Małgorzata Wielek-Mandrela, Krzysztof Maniak, Paweł Matyszewski, Magdalena Moskwa, Marta Paciejewska, Artur Nacht – Samborski, Jacek Sienicki, Antoni Starczewski, Irmina Staś, UrbanArt (Anne Peshken i Marek Pisarsky), Michał Zawada, Marcin Zawicki, Wojciech Zubala

Curator: Katarzyna Jankowiak Gumna
Coordination: Karolina Pikosz

Beginning 05.03.2020, 6pm
20 Gdańska St.
End 26.04.2020