Joanna Tochman, Daria Wollman. The endless blue

The common area of interest linking the creative explorations of Joanna Tochman and Daria Wollman is the concept of landscape and its perception as a cultural construction, a set of representations, myths and legends and the human emotions projected onto it. 

By combining the artists' works into a kind of overall scenographic installation, the exhibition tells the story of a place where a man-made landscape has the power to take on a life of its own. This surrealistic-geological space, seemingly pleasant, becomes disturbing after a while and makes us lose our balance and control over reality.

Different types of landscape evoke different emotions. There are a number of studies that analyse the effects of landscape on humans. Contemplation of nature activates areas of the brain associated with stress reduction. According to the Restorative Environment Theory (Restorative Environment Theory), landscape has the ability to restore mental and physical balance. Elements of nature, such as greenery, water and open spaces, contribute to a decrease in cortisol levels and blood pressure.

Surrealist landscapes evoke fear. Introducing dreamlike and ambiguous visions of reality, they break logical rules and cause confusion, which prompts philosophical reflections on the nature of reality.
According to Rosario Assunto, Italian philosopher and art theorist, landscape is not limited to space, but contains an emotional, spiritual and symbolic layer. It is at once finite and infinite. Assunto uses the concept of the transcendental landscape to refer to the way in which humans perceive and experience landscape, going beyond its purely visual or material aspects. Assunto emphasises that the perception of landscape is not neutral - it is shaped by the culture, history and philosophy of an era. Possessing a metaphysical dimension, it allows man to transcend - to exceed his own individual existence and come closer to absolute values such as beauty, harmony or spirituality.

The exhibition The Endless Blue refers to a transcendental landscape that has both a narrative and philosophical function. One of the references used by the authors is Italo Calvino's short stories. Exploring themes of labyrinths, the density of reality and its multilayeredness, Calvino constructs cosmic landscapes as unexplored spaces that become symbols of the infinite and inexpressibility of human experience. In the short story Everything at One Point, the author takes us back to a time before the expansion of the universe, a vision inspired by the scientific model of the Big Bang. In it, he describes the difficulty of existing in a reality where everything is so compacted and compressed that there is no space for movement. The protagonist tries to move, to find his place and to distinguish himself, but the conditions are extreme. The sense of personal identity becomes blurred because it is impossible to distinguish oneself from anything else. Only the changes in the landscape allow the protagonist to create his own individuality.

In the 1990s, Russian artists Vitaly Komar and Aleksandr Melamid carried out an art project called America's Most Wanted Painting. Telephone surveys were conducted in various countries, asking, among other things: What colours do you like best in paintings? What subject matter should be in the painting? Should it contain happy, serious or sad elements? Two paintings were created for each country: Most Wanted Painting - the painting that corresponds to the preferences of the majority of respondents, and Least Wanted Painting - the painting based on the least liked characteristics. In most of the countries analysed, the respondents' desired paintings are remarkably similar. They all contain a landscape with predominantly blue.
In Giacomo Leopardi's theory of cosmic pessimism, the boundless blue is the image of unlimited space, which the philosopher contemplates from a hilltop. The horizon is the end of the landscape, which paradoxically allows one to imagine infinity. Looking into the blue sky, man searches for the meaning of his own existence, but does not find the answer. The aesthetic perfection of the world does not mean its goodness here, and the universe is indifferent to human suffering.


Daria Wollman - visual artist living and working in Katowice. She is a graduate of graphic design at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Katowice. In 2021 she obtained her diploma in the Literature Interpretation Studio of Prof. Grzegorz Hańderek. She graduated from the State Secondary Music School in Zabrze in the accordion class. She works mainly in sculpture, object and painting. For several years, she has been creating works drawing inspiration from legends and ancient stories of the Podhale region, combining them with vivid colours, flash and organic forms. In her work we find elements of kitsch, which are a play on aesthetics and a reference to the contemporary image of Zakopane.

Joanna Tochman - visual artist, born in 1992 in Kraków. Graduate of art history at the Jagiellonian University and the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, where she graduated in 2018 in the atelier of Professor Andrzej Bednarczyk. She is currently studying at the Doctoral School of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. The area of her creative activity includes painting, photography and artistic objects. In her works, she moves on the borderline between the real world and imagination, exploring themes of space, landscape, places and non-places. Finalist of Hestia's Artistic Journey 2018, winner of the New Image New Look 2018 competition, Grand Prix winner of the Eibisch Competition 2019, two-time finalist of Strabag Artaward International (2021, 2023), finalist of Lublin Spring 2023, winner of the Young Space Award for Visual Arts Scotland 2022. In 2019, her first solo exhibition entitled I will tell a different adventure, a weirder one, took place at the UAP Big Stage gallery in Poznań.


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