"Deadline" is based on a specific collection of photographs collected by the author for over a decade. Dr hab. Tomasz Ferenc takes documentary photographs that present images of human skulls in architectural details of buildings such as churches, monasteries, cemeteries and other places associated with contemplation and transience. The photographs, which were taken during travels covering Poland, Western and Central Eastern Europe and the United States, are striking in their variety of style and the degree of realism of the representation of the subject related to the eras in which they were taken.
Some of the skulls in Ferenc's photographs are terrifying, while others seem naive, or perhaps even funny, bordering on the grotesque. The formal multiplicity emphasises the rich history of iconography related to death in European culture and is a starting point for creating an exhibition that provokes reflection on death and transience and their role in culture. The perspective proposed by Tomasz Ferenc as an artist-collector, but also a scientist focused on anthropology and visual sociology, interested in particular in processes related to borderland culture and biographical aspects of the sociology of art, is a multimedia experience, a kind of provocative invitation for the viewer to enter a world based on the contemplation of the image of death and its perception.
Embracing the inevitable
The photographs that make up the thanatourism collection become a starting point for the production of artifacts based on the principles of popular puzzles. For example, Ferenc's work Memento Mori Memory from 2017 – an interactive game using representations of skulls in a surprising and subversive artistic gesture that invites you to find similar motifs in a set of diverse architectural details, connected by the motif of the image of death.
This strategy, repeated in subsequent, later works presented at the university's Wozownia 1/5 Gallery, encourages reflection on the ever-present, evolving motif-symbol of vanitas. The historical, documentary aspect of photography is transformed into a provocative act of play, where the transmedia element can constitute a kind of commentary on contemporary visual culture.
The titular Deadline is a term that means an unbreakable deadline – a moment when the carried out activities are realized in a place and time. In corporate newspeak, this term is commonly used to mean the finalistion, the end of a project. As the title of the exhibition, Deadline means balancing between the position of an observer and a participant in a specific visual spectacle, the aim of which is to draw attention to the inevitability of transience, but above all to create a field for discussion on the ways of "domesticating" this topic through art.
"Deadline"
- artist: Tomasz Ferenc (Department of Sociology of Art, Faculty of Economics and Sociology, University of Lodz)
- curator: Maciej Andrzejewski (University of Lodz)
- coordinator of the accompanying events programme: Dr Łucja Lange (Department of Sociology of Art, Faculty of Economics and Sociology, University of Lodz)
The official opening of the exhibition will be held on 14 November at 6:00 p.m. at the university’s 1/5 Wozownia Gallery (Franciszkańska 1/5).
The exhibition will be open until 14 December 2024 and can be viewed on the following days and times:
- Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
- Saturdays from 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
On other days the exhibition can be viewed after making an appointment via e-mail: komunikacja@uni.lodz.pl.
A programme of accompanying events, touching on issues related to death constitutes an integral part of the exhibition. Dr Łucja Lange from the Department of Sociology of Art, who scientifically deals with issues related to the experience of mourning (Death Studies), loss, good death is the author of the programme. A detailed schedule will appear soon.