Paulina Komorowska-Birger

A Windmill Wing windmill wing, leaflet, glass, film fragment from Ściana płaczu [The Western Wall]

Zenon Polus: an artist, an educator, a director, a colleague – Zenek.

Uneasy relations, that is how I would call our acquaintance.

He represented a distinct artistic approach, whose one of key signpost was Joseph Beuys. A lack of compromise in art and numerous compromises at work, related to performing duties of the deputy Director of the Institute of Art and Visual Culture, constituted, in my view, basic features of his personality.

A selection of artists co-forming the Institute of Art and Visual Culture – made thanks to Zenek's intuition, knowledge and determination, and, as a consequence, my cooperation with him – has shaped my perception of art.

A fragment of a wing from a wind turbine left by the President of ANMET Company on the windowsill in the office of the Director of the Institute of Visual Arts produced in me an association with Zenek Polus' works. Paradoxically, since 1999, I have occupied Zenek's place in the office. I am still using the black leather armchair, in which I used to see him on many occasions.

The wing fragment, an enrolment leaflet with a photograph of a group of closest colleagues (reduced to the Chair of Art and Visual Culture), a film fragment from the first exhibition opening in the house on Mieczykowa 7 street (in which Zenek Polus plays the trumpet), and a hillock of glass threads. These are my memories of those times: interesting times, intense, full of spontaneity, ambitious art projects (also those independent of our place of employment), constructing the consciousness of a place with which I decided to be closely tied for 30 years, as well as artistic independence I have gained thanks to this place.

The Flight of Icarus is the first exhibition dedicated to Zenek's memory, initiating a return to the tradition of a Zielona Góra event in the form of a contemporary art biennale, an originator and organiser of which in the eighties and nineties of the former century was Zenon Polus.