Slawomir Fijałkowski, Christiane Förster, Karl Fritsch, Sophie Hanagarth, Herman Hermsen, Daniel Kruger, Stefano Marchetti, Pavel Opočensky, Annelies Planteijdt, Ramon Puig Cuyàs, Wolfgang Rahs, Ulrich Reithofer, Philip Sajet, Adolfas Šaulys, Gisbert Stach, Wilhelm Tasso Mattar, Manuel Vilhena, Arek Wolski i Petra Zimmermann are the names of well-known European artists who accepted the invitation to the „Fossil Tears” exhibition. Most of them had no previous contact with amber – and this was precisely the intention of the originators: Wim Vandekerckhove and Sławomir Fijałkowski.
They wanted artists to look at amber with an „unspoiled” eye, to be inspired by the legends surrounding it, to filter it through their own sensitivity and own associations with this stone. „Our assumption has been realised: new creations, interesting ideas have emerged, but a new artistic sensibility has also come to the fore,” summarised Wim Vandekerckhove, who runs the Willa de Bondt gallery, where the exhibition's first vernissage took place in January. „The exhibition's objectives have been excellently realised, and as a co-creator of the project, I have the personal satisfaction that the exhibition could serve as a pretext for discovering the avant-garde nature of the ‘gold of the North’ and contribute to the creation of a unique collection of contemporary amber art objects. I hope that amber will become a source of new inspiration in discovering elements of European identity, reaching back to ancient mythologies, as well as entirely non-mythological discoveries – archaeological, palaeontological, but also artistic,” said Prof. Sławomir Fijałkowski, Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Design at the Gdańsk Academy of Fine Arts.
Exhibition „Petrified Tears”
Amber Museum in Gdansk
21.03 – 21.04.2013
Previous news on this topic:
„Petrified tears”
Sławomir Fijałkowski: Petrified Smile
Artistic sensitivity expressed in amber
Creators „unspoiled” by amber - a conversation with Wim Vandekerckhove