Adoratio

Justyna Baśnik’s Adoratio is the effect of the artist’s ongoing considerations on spiritualities outside the sphere of religion. Baśnik uses her works as a nonfigurative iconography of a spiritual system based on atheism, devoid of a specified sacrum being worshiped. The concept of spirituality in art discussed by the artist is derived from Malevich and Kandinsky but here art is not viewed as an opposition to existing belief systems but rather as an alternative way of experiencing spiritual life. In the artist’s view, spirituality based on rational mental experiences stands against mysticism and esotericism. It provides a space where religiosity does not require a divine figure, it centers on experiences arising during immanent communion with art. The objects shown at the exhibition intend to make these spiritual experiences available. Justyna Baśnik consciously uses sacral associations without repurposing existing symbols. Gothic forms function merely as a framing for an imagined contemporary symbolism based on abstract forms. “The human spirit is far too important a matter to be left up to priests, mullahs or spiritualists. It is our noblest part, or, rather, our highest function, the thing that makes us not only different from other animals (for we are animals as well), but greater than and superior to them. ‘Man is a metaphysical animal,’ said Schopenhauer – and therefore, I would add, a spiritual animal as well. This is our way of inhabiting the universe and the absolute, which inhabit us. [...] Not believing in God is no reason to amputate a part of our humanity, especially not that part! Renouncing religion by no means implies renouncing spiritual life.” The Book of Atheist Spirituality, Andre Comte Sponville