Mariusz Tarkawian

The corridor of the Biała Gallery in Lublin has recently found its new purpose. For the exhibition Lots of Drawings, which opened on February 12, 2016, the artist Mariusz Tarkawian reconstructed a small part of one of his largest projects History of Art and Civilization Test that he created in 2007-2009 on the corridor walls of the abandoned wing of the Center for Culture in Lublin. The monumental, fifty-meter-long piece was destroyed during the building renovation a few years ago. Based on the catalog published by the Biała Gallery at that time, Tarkawian started to draw again, this time on the walls of a new corridor.

On March 24, 2016, which was the day of the finissage, Tarkawian selected some motifs from the exhibition and added them – by drawing – to the wall piece, thereby marking the beginning of a new artistic project, which will continue for some time. In this project, the artist is going to keep working on the existing mural by enriching it with new drawings inspired by every new exhibition taking place at the Biała Gallery.

Interestingly, among drawings presenting art history, history of civilization and history of Biała exhibitions, Mariusz Tarkawian, also known as the “chronicler” of the gallery, placed an epigraph in Latin from Ovid’s Metamorphoses: ‘Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes’, which in George Sandys’s translation sounds ‘to arts unknown he bends his wits, and alters nature’.