Grzegorz Drozd

Long Gaze
sculptures, 2014

The eponymous Long Gaze is a pylon made of bundles of light which depict the gaze of two stone owls looking at one another, and function at the same time as the gate into a passage on the premises of the main edifice of the Gdańsk University of Technology.
The owl is a solitary bird, which inhabits all areas of the earth, with exceptionally sharp senses of sight and smell. It reigns at night. For centuries, it has been a symbol of wisdom and clairvoyance as well as secret knowledge and horror. The first mystics believed that owls had a luminous substance in their eyes which dispersed darkness and facilitated seeing, showing the way to those who lost it; the bird itself was believed to be guided by the moon.
Long Gaze consists of a male and a female owl which cross their gazes. Their feathers are made of noble Carrara marble, whose crystal-like structure symbolises the purity of intentions and intransigent action. Their form emerged from the process of humdrum hitting with a tool against a stone block, and the claws and beak were made of steel heated to red hot. To quote the artist: The hits of the blacksmith’s heavy hand are a guarantee of their indestructibility.
The sculptures symbolise the amplified energy of reflection on the structure of the matter and its manifestations. Their luminous gazes pierce the darkness like the mythical Ariadne’s thread, whose continuity marks the covered distance as well as the way back.
As the artist writes: Space is a child of time in which we’ve been imprisoned.

Grzegorz Drozd (b. 1970), lives and works in Warsaw.
Painter, action and installation artist, photographer. Alert observer of reality, which he describes with his own language, creating uneasy and surprising situations, often without a script. Plays on conventions and rituals, breaks the arbitrary character of art. A manipulator who declares on his own account: “an artist is for me a social exile and a criminal”. Relational and participatory artist, critic of institutions, creator of works that operate as vehicles of personal emotions.
In 2010, he symbolically “abandoned” Western culture and began his nomadic trip towards remote South Asia in search of “Paradise Lost”. After two years and covering more than 100 000 km he returned to Poland.
Between 1992 and 1995, he studied at the Artistic Faculty of Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. Graduate of the Faculty of Painting and the Faculty of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, 2007.
Participant in several artistic residences, among others in Prague and Budapest. Awarded two scholarships of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, co-founder of the project Changing of Traffic Movement (ZOR).
This year, his individual shows have been presented at the CCA Zamek Ujazdowski and Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko. Participant in numerous group exhibitions in Poland and abroad – at Cracow’s MOCAK, CCA Znaki Czasu in Toruń, Waterside Contemporary in London or Gare Sauveur in Lille, France.