At own pace - solo-exhibition by Włodzimierz Cygan
Mentzendorffʹs House, Riga, LV
15.06.2023 - 28.07.2023

Guest artist of the 7th Riga International Textile and Fibre Art Triennial QUO VADIS? Włodzimierz Cygan is one of the most famous and leading artists in the textile and fibre art field in Poland. His works have got recognition and won prizes not only in Poland, but worldwide.

His solo exhibition is retrospective, cross-sectional, presenting works created over many years of activity and a few – presented for the first time.

Renown for his textile innovations, Włodzimierz Cygan has displayed flat and spatial fabrics, made with traditional techniques and textile materials in which the warp system has been modified by changing direction.

Cygan loves experimentation with fiber optics within textile art. He explains, “I use optical fiber mono-filament with increased light transmission for warp and weft as a complementary material for the textile structure." In doing so, he attempts and manages to connect two opposites: permanence of textile materials and a continuous change of the light. The woven, flexible light in these works is constantly changing its intensity, “like the passing of time transformed by seasons which slowly and gently create vibrant poetic stories," he says. “Shadows cast on the walls play an important role in planning the cracks, holes, irregular and uneven edges of my compositions."

These fabrics with light emitting optical fiber exhibited in semi-darkness create fascinating emotional and mystical atmosphere and trigger a variety of associations.

The exhibition includes also several cycles of vertical fabrics of a strongly elongated shape on the background of the white wall and this might bring to the mind the passing image of the forest. The artist’s intention is to try to evoke in the viewer a sense of harmony between what is eternal and what lies at the essence of the current moment.