Zbigniew Libera is one of the most interesting and important contemporary Polish artists. His works - photographs, videos, installations, objects and drawings - sharply and subversively play with stereotypes of contemporary culture. Shocking videos from the 1980s (among others, "Intimate Rites" and "Mystical Perseverance") preceded the wave of body-art by 10 years. In the mid-1990s, Libera began creating "Correctional Devices" - objects that are modifications of existing products - objects of mass consumption (such as the "Universal Penis Expander" and "Body Master. In works such as "Lego Concentration Camp" he revealed the mechanisms of education, upbringing and cultural formation by transforming children's toys. In doing so, he has become one of the leading representatives of so-called critical art, although his work and activities are otherwise linked to independent circles and the off-stage. In recent years, he has also worked on photography, especially the specifics of press photography and the ways in which the media influence our visual memory and manipulate the image of history (works from the series "Positives" and "Masters", 2003).

It is the Positives that have been selected for the exhibition at Kabinet T. These staged photographs represent well-known historical images from the press reformulated into a positive version. They preserve the compositional schemes of the originals with a different cast and, in particular, a changed meaning of the scenes presented. The author chose the subjects, or "negatives", from his own memory, often from images that stuck with him from his childhood. In his own words, Libera tried to work with the mechanism of seeing and remembering, to touch upon the phenomenon of visual memory. These "positive" images evoke original, often harsh scenes in our minds. 
The title plays symbolically with photographic terms, where the black colour in the negative corresponds to the white colour in the positive. Thus, in Liber's photographs, the dark is transformed into the light, the sad into the cheerful. He has chosen well-known photographs of the horrors of war, destruction and doom for his transformation of meaning. While preserving the poses of the actors, he changed their expressions so that the image became positive. In the photograph "Mieszkancy", which paraphrases a concentration camp photograph, we see a smiling and happy group of people.  As in the foreground, we observe striped clothing - striped pyjamas, barbed wire replaced by clotheslines. The sight of the laughing naked girl running in the photograph "Nepal" cannot but remind us of the terrified girl in the famous reportage film "Napalm". The horrific meaning of the original footage has not been suppressed, it is recalled in our memory despite what the new image actually captures. The original image is an inseparable shadow of the new. The content of a photograph is not the object depicted, but the depiction itself; reality is above all a media image.

Television, newspapers, documentaries are fond of showing human misfortunes and tragedies. For success in popular competitions like World Press Photo, the more drastic the better. On the other hand, even such depictions have their canon. Horrific images must look pretty. Mass culture doesn't hesitate to turn anything into its product. In the pursuit of the perfect image, photographers are not reluctant to arrange the footage, or at least edit it with minor retouching. They give us a preview of world events according to their own criteria. The real qualities of the situation - pain, cold, hunger... we usually don't feel.
Zbigniew Libera's work testifies to the power of reportage images and media. He also manipulates photographs, but instead of just creating an ideal image of reality, he unmasks the mechanism of manipulation.
Václav Mílek

Zbigniew Libera
Born on 7 July 1959 in Pabianice, Poland. 
1979 started studying at the Faculty of Education of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, left his studies after a year
1980-1986 associated with the Strych Gallery circuit, member of the Kultura Zrzuty group, co-editor of the "Tango" magazine
1982-1983 imprisoned for publishing unofficial press. 
1986-1989 co-founder and member of the punk band Sternenhoch
1988-2006 lives and works in Warsaw
1988-2000 poses as a model for photographic works by Zofia Kulik 
2000-2001 co-founder of two art clubs: Baumgart/Libera and later Aurora
2006 begins to live a nomadic life, moves to Greece for a year to start
2008 - 2009 visiting professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague

Exhibited works:
Workers, 2002, c-print, 70 x 100 cm
Nepal, 2003, c-print, 70 x 100 cm 
Residents, 2003, c-print, 70 x 100 cm
Soldiers and Girls, 2002-2004, pastels, watercolor on paper, 45,5 x 59 cm
Soldiers and Old Men, 2002-2004, pencil, watercolour on paper 
Liberation, 2003, c-print, 180 x 120 cm 

Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Raster, Warszawa 
www.raster.art.pl