Mutants, 1971

A joint project undertaken with Andrzej Lachowicz and Natalia Lach-Lachowicz set out to examine the relationship between reality and its mechanical record – the photograph. “Mutants” was an experiment, a playing with the process of transforming an image. The project falls in line with works in which Zbigniew Dlubak examined the possibilities of applying the principles of linguistics to art: the adequacy of structural linguistic analyses of the “signifier”, the “signified”, and the “referent”, in the art field. Mutants is both a set of photographs published in “Odra” magazine (issue 3 1971) as well as a comprehensive exhibition project shown in the “Pod Mona Liza” Gallery in 1971. Antoni Dzieduszycki described the presentation in the following way: ”In the gallery’s exhibition hall, which serves as the passage way of the International Book and Press Clubs [MPiK], appeared an enormous white cube which forced those wanting to pass to almost squeeze by the walls. The cube was cut in half horizontally, and its two parts slightly shifted in relation to each other. Considering the object alone one could say it operated under the principles of the “minimal art” tendency, but it was not the proper work on view, rather it was a kind of exhibition scaffolding. On the front of the cube one saw a massive black text MUTANTS. And this writing seemed to work independently through its form. On the side of the cube were massive initials of the authors, their photographs, names and the first three out of a series of fifteen photographs. While the photographs, which were the main focus of the show, were exhibited on the back of the cube, as if they were the least important part…”