Hedva Ser: Destruction and Rebirth

The exhibition presents sculptures by Hedva Ser, a renowned French artist, awarded in 2011 the title of UNESCO Artist for Peace. It is the first time Ser’s work has been exhibited in Poland.

The exhibited sculptures—raw 350-kilo blocks of bronze—form a cycle intended to symbolize the story of the Jewish community in Poland. Remaining under strong influence of Kabbalistic thought, the sculptor creates works that seek to capture the dialectical process, the synthesis of disparate phenomena, associated with destruction and reconstruction, disintegration and harmony, and death and rebirth. This process, according to Ser, aims to achieve a state of equilibrium. However, it is something inherently fragile—unstable and threatened by an inevitable plunge back into chaos.

Ser’s sculptures are artistic representations of the endless cycle of destruction and rebirth’s various phases. They express the artist's hopeful belief that the disintegration of some form of existence invariably entails the creation of something new: that destruction is, in fact, a precondition for regeneration. The relegated world has the power to be reborn.

Hedva Ser (born in Israel, 1948) is a French artist of Polish-Jewish descent. She creates mainly sculptures, watercolours, and jewellery. She attended art schools in Paris and London. Initially mainly interested in painting and drawing, she turned her attention to sculpture after meeting Alicia Penalba in 1973. This Argentinean artist had a profound impact on Hedva Ser’s further work.