Jarek Lustych “It’s Not What You Think”

Exhibition opening: 9 January 2026 (Friday), 6 pm
Place: Labirynt Gallery, Księdza Jerzego Popiełuszki Street 5, Lublin
On view until: 8 February 2026 (Tuesday-Sunday, noon-7 pm)
Free entry

I dipped a string into the river a few years ago. I expected a sound; however, I was surprised by its complexity. The river seemed to speak, and its voice was deep.

What in this – seemingly purely physical – phenomenon eludes scientific explanation became the subject of my inquiry. It gave rise to a series of artistic experiences in an area not yet explored by art and only marginally accessible to human cognition. Contact with the invisible – or more broadly, with the hidden – has always been the core of my work. I was usually interested in mysteries that exist within everyday life and are close at hand. One such undiscovered form is the voice of water, which is understood as a form of art, though not created by humans.

Since 2016, I have been extracting and recording the voices of rivers along with the visual effects of their energy. I have treated rivers as entities and authors of creative acts. This closeness and a sense of brotherhood can be symbolically conveyed by juxtaposing a hydrographic map of some area with old engravings from medical textbooks which show the human vascular system. If rivers are the Earth’s bloodstream, then seas, with their constant pulsing, seem to be its heart. The continual movement of water, which has been fascinating humanity for centuries, reveals itself in sounds. However, recording what can be heard by the river or the sea is limited by what is visible, that is, the surface. The goal was to transcend it and reach the depths.

Inventing instruments capable of translating this inner pulsation and undulation – sometimes gentle, sometimes full of fury – into sound proved to be quite a challenge. It required working in unfavourable (inhumane!) conditions and tedious repetition of attempts.

The creation of the model of the “symbiotic artist” served to mentally legitimise these (and similar) actions. Such an artist shares their human authorship with non-human beings, who become active actors in art and manifest their own subjectivity. Recognising this and attempting to understand it empathetically reveals previously unrecognised aspects of art, which is created as a result of human cooperation with both living and inanimate nature. Thus, by fulfilling the postulates of critical posthumanism, one can enter into the multidimensionality of the real world and create a platform for understanding what is inhuman, or rather superhuman. Strengthening cooperation with this part of existence (and, in fact, part of ourselves) and empathising with it should be treated as the basis for survival.

Is revealing the unknown of existence an art form? Without doubt, if we assume that art seeks truth and that its essence or derivative is cognition. Revealing what is hidden broadens the observer’s reality and experience. It also transforms the viewer when they realise that they belong to a community wider than humanity, or when they notice creative activity in a sphere previously perceived as a silent, passive backdrop to their own existence. It is enough to lift the veil to bring them closer to the discreet reality of the subject (the non-human component of the “symbiotic artist”) existing in this background. The artist performing this act (the human component of the “symbiotic artist”) does not provoke anything; they neither dictate conditions nor control the situation. They seem to be rather a servant than a master, but, thanks to the discovered medium, they allow another entity to speak. They work in tandem, in a proprietary partnership, in symbiosis.

The boiler room of Labirynt Gallery, which is the hub of a forced circulation heat substation, is the perfect place to present a project about rivers and seas – about the driving force of nature. This is a good place to give water a voice.

Co-financed by the European Union’s NextGenerationEU fund as part of the National Recovery Plan.

Jarek Lustych – multimedia artist, PhD student at SDNHiS UMCS. Since 2000, he has been striving to transcend the anthropocentric view of the world. He has been creating projects that incorporate natural components of the ecosystem, which become co-authors or active participants in his works. Using a variety of media and recycled materials, he attempts to highlight overlooked aspects of the environment and avoid the creation of new objects. His projects have been carried out in collaboration with institutions such as the Pilar Juncosa & Joan Miró Foundation (2005, Palma de Mallorca), Künstlerhaus Villa Waldberta (2017, Munich), Luxlakes A4 Art Museum (2019, Chengdu, China), Foksal Gallery (2021, Warsaw) and PIER2 Pair (2024, Kaohsiung, Taiwan).