Jacek Kos, Images of war - future perfect tense

"IMAGES OF WAR - FUTURE PERFECT TENSE" - is a scenographic exhibition - a spatially extended site-specific installation. War is the main problem area of the author's exhibition, which with the use of space and form, will express the dramatic emotions common to many generations experienced by war.

The universalism of the drama, common to all wars, is combined with the individual experience of the tragedy of the individual's fate. War - as a phenomenon and a concept - combines aspects that were the emotional and intellectual basis for me in my search for the form and content of the exhibition.

1. War - the universal aspect - war as a 'universal history of wickedness', a phenomenon present for millennia in human history. 
2. War - generational aspect - a traumatic experience present in the memories of generations of parents and grandparents - memories of the First and Second World Wars.
3. War - contemporary aspect - Russia's invasion of Ukraine - aggression of militarised army units against a defenceless civilian population - an invasion aimed at annihilating a nation, its spiritual and material culture.

War is no longer merely a phenomenon inscribed in the history of mankind, or a poignant memory of loved ones from the recent past - it is already present here and now, it has taken over the present, it will decide the future of individuals, generations, nations, states - it will decide what it will be - the 'future perfect tense'. 
The war in Ukraine is the most moving impulse to express personal reflection and reaction expressed in a medium of creative expression that is close to me - a space that engages the audience to co-participate, co-perceive, co-feel.
The image of this war - is the drama of the individual - the image of the shattering, destruction, disintegration of the personal world - the material world - the closest place - the room, flat, home, city.
In these images I find a visual and spatial 'alphabet', 'words', 'syntax' - a 'language' capable of expressing the drama of war.

They are material remains - objects, elements of interiors, fragments of architecture - remnants of places of shattered reality.
The venue of the exhibition - the Aula of the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław - became the basis for a search for space and the form of a spatial installation in the spirit of site-specifiers - integrally connected to the existing place.
Photographs of the Academy , destroyed during World War II, as well as the author's series of photographs depicting images of destruction, complete the message of this exhibition. 
The music - by Jakub Kasperkiewicz - 'Astronomical Winter' - with its universalism of message depth becomes an integral value of the exhibition.

Jacek Kos

Urszula Gogulska-Kos – cooperation