“Ground Training/ Cwiczenia naziemne”

The exhibition “Ground Training/ Ćwiczenia naziemne” is a preparation for the first edition of the Cosmic Era Festival in Olesnica. The works presented in the Forma Otwarta gallery were influenced by the only “cosmic monument” in Poland, which was designed for Olesnica by the outstanding Wroclaw sculptor, Jerzy Boron. The brutalist monument was built on the outskirts of the old town in 1972, in the place of a mediaeval moat. Commemorating the modernizing optimism of the first cosmic flight of Yuri Gagarin, its construction was meant to emphasise the newly “recovered” western territories of the Polish People’s Republic as belonging to the sphere of Soviet influence. Over the course of fifty years, the landmark has become a local icon, unconsciously entangled in the global game of imagination and actual political decision. In the interpretation of Sokolnicka and Geisser, the monumental sculpture of Boroń becomes a starting point to reflect on the gravity of history and the foolish detachment from reality– training aimed at eliminating risk and exploring the potential of non-existent dimensions of reality.