WOJCIECH WILCZYK, GRZEGORZ WRÓBLEWSKI Poetry and Photography – The ‘Blue Pueblo’ Project

The exhibition is pivoted on a fusion of poetry and photography. In 2013, Grzegorz Wróblewski wrote his poem Blue Pueblo. Inspired by it, Wojciech Wilczyk took a series of photographs of Amager, the district of Copenhagen where the poet lives. The poem and a series of black-and-white photographs, displayed on the wall side by side, all combine into the project Blue Pueblo.

In Wróblewski’s work, the streets of Amager bear silent witness to a human drama. The poem records the experiences of a man who uses hard drugs to numb the suffering of parting with his beloved. He finds no solace in psychology or religion. Solitude brings palpable pain. Graphic descriptions of physiological functions are interspersed with references to literature, art and music; the sensual blends with the spiritual. In the final analysis, nature is the only way out: ‘To go towards the forest and the river. To look for people there. To look for a star. Until the definitive journey begins.’

The photographs express the emotions of the poem. The black-and-white shots of the deserted metropolis expose the indifference of the city towards a suffering individual and provide a visualisation of the state of mind, a piercing void after losing a loved one. Symmetrical frames and repetitive architectural motifs together with the play of shadows on the facades of buildings make the urban landscape appear unfriendly. ‘Death’, scrawled on one of the buildings, further intensifies the sense of threat, pointing to the precarious balancing between life and death.