The author of the project „[in]tension” – Łukasz Gronowski declares that showed at the exhibition works create the collection. The collection which already comes into being for some time. The best collections have expressive criteria. The artist forestalls all tests of the establishment of the key simultaneously – he writes: „is this analytic, and the most intuitive from all works presented by me in the last time". All in this case depends on individual tracing meanings. And I begin the search of the key by myself – trusting only to my own intuition.

The first key

In the series of works „[in]tension” appears very characteristic for the author artistic attitude joining in each other the social sensibility with certain good-natured distance in the face of noted down in the society drolleries and defects. Gronowski does not import to the common nominative (what?), he is not the follower of easy summarizes for which some of people are waiting for. The artist is attentive: he writes down and observes - but he does not condemn, he does not put under the pillory.
He strenghten in the memory of our small rituals and reactions. Sometime he provokes , what wrests us from ours skilled perfectly roles and the patterns of behaviours.Various „simple histories" are realized to very lightly, entertainingly - like appearing and the running away from the field of the sight hoop of the roundabout in the work of the video „Backstage”. The author to perfection mastered the skill of the perception of the abstraction in ordinary phenomena.This key fits to the majority of Łukasza Gronowskiego works, but … probably not to this. Though here the man still is in the the centre of the interest (although there is no man in the frame too often) then the vector of the observation changes. Not the observation of to the ritual attracts us in these works. Rather precipitation from the ritual or private, single and unique ritual - e.g. in the work „Practice”.People often stand up on the front of the sea and sink in the qasi-meditation, because they think that that associate with the figure of the absolute. We have thousands of cripples from different performances in the head. This situation gives birth to many associates. But there is no elderly mister in declining shorts, executing the simplest from possible practices at all - to losing oneself, without the end. Introduced situations do not consent to the everyday experience. They deny . They surprise. They hit in stereotypes and rituals.

The second key

If meanwhile works from the cycle „[in]tension” some right rules (irrational, but hard) then mayb we have to deal with a game? The reality of the game. But not a computer game , only such game-party from reading primer which usually build in the childhood our experiences and our imagination?

The„trench” transfers us from the the world of the politics in the the world of the party. For the liveliness stately of Heads States meeting hides Fun fair. The scale of looking changes and the choice weight of paintings changes. Let's remember about this. Let's play. The most obvious example is the work „Zero to zero” the simulation of the fight. It reflects „two - persons game about zero as the total sum . Where every choice of the strategy a profit of one players marks the loss of second ... even if the rate is loss of energy. Surely everyone in the childhood extricated the outlines of figure or thing from the disorderly tangle of lines in kids notebooks - these persons will not have the problem with the reception of the work „Kożyczkowo”... „Man in the roof” provokes me to calling an other kids game. When we look on the penguin from the suitable side we can see the aurochs. In the photo of authorship of Gronowski i can see a man on the captain bridge, proudly staring in the horizon! In the repertoire of games we have still have to show the elements not fitting to small picture. Let's do so: from the photo „Dabbles in on horses” let's – remove title heroes.
We will receive the painting of the deserted spa full of plastic, unleavened design. The ideal aim of the lens of Polish lomographer. And if we remove couches and umbrellas? We will restore the painting of the steam going on horses on the hollow beach - painting having kitschy postcard iconography and tradition . This excess is temporary. Is is only the artist whim. Nothing is obvious in the the world which you should just define. That what becomes obvious and insignificant for adult, often causes surprise and fear at children. Kids trifles in the gallery is the charming subject, and artists like to reach for it but ... not Gronowski . Even if dismissal to kids perception helps to regonize the distant feeling of loss in the world, which on one's way we should to tame and to recognize continually on newly . This is only a hand not a solution of interpretation of this work.

Third key

Surrendering the atmosphere of works accumulated at the exhibition „[in]tension” we can not lean the impression that we have to deal with calling of the epoch of romanticism or as who prefers: the feeling, that its very hard for Polish artist to run from it . The work „Belvedere” introduces us in the the world of the protest against courtliness and court artificiality. This is the representative interior which is simultaneously disgustingly kitschy. It is also through all vegetable ornaments the terrific substitute of the nature. Only what is in this place natural this slovenly inertia left on the table, lightly hidden in draperies table-cloth. Who is this? Did masters miss this place a moment ago. Were they behaving near the table tolerably or like companions from the animal farm. The seemingly neutral, empty painting deters as the emanation of architecture and the representation of the power. Where is the opposition to lounge today? As in the „Sunday walk”: sudden mystical dazzle which can come only on the womb of the nature or „Stadium”– exotic place and turpistic at the same time . Does „Man in the roof” is not the incarnation of romantic individualism? Does the rest of works do not deny simple imitating the visible world aiming to baring the hidden mechanisms of the world? From fog to fog swims a double Charon boat . Which even lost a death soul and all trials of fishing up her by boat-hook fail. Like my dummy run of finding the relationship of these works with romanticism.

Without a key

From the beginning of the reception of works from the cycle „[in]tension”accompanies me internally a lyric of a Variete band from before many years :

(...)
this the water of the surface
this is the only surface (…)
plays under the surface
a gipsy music
(…)

In real I look at this exhibition without a key....and also with excess of different keys. All my searches are entitled. But they fail. Because the sharp and expressive criterion of the selection of these works is … contradiction, disagreement and rasp.

„[in]tension” records the condition of fleeting bending the surface in the superficial tension. Certain kind of changes sets are uncatchy . Results will be visible in some of time. We became, saying for Baudrillardem, silent majority, shapeless mass increasing and also deconstructed
simultaneously by the media. We are subjected under the pressure of ritual and repetition.
The society activates itself only by marking the places of the resistance – for activists and the place of care - for antisocial individuals.
In works of Gronowski people, their actions and creations do not belong to none of these categories.
They do not belong to „strange"categories. They are ordinary individuals, but they are doing useless
unusable and abstract actions. Maybe this just the rasp, surprising and temporary distinctness from the example of behaviours is only effective strategy of letting the resistance of unification word the title „ tension / expectation" is the the calmest revolution?

Only camera, photographic camera nowadays is capable to catch.But only amateurs are on the place, when the catastrophe comes. Or happiness. Such atmosphere „[in]tension”gives to us. Formally works oscillate on the border of unprofessional. On the border of correctness. Accidental, but the accurate registration of symptoms.
Symptoms of what?
We will wait, we will see...

Monika Weychert Waluszko
Teacher of Polish (UMK), culture expert, manager of culture, curator of art ,
founder of „Galeria dla..” in Toruń.