The exhibition of works by Alojzy Gryt, an outstanding artist from Wrocław, has been planned as an elaborate installation in which the artist enters into a creative dialogue with the venue. The installation contains threads and subjects that have been present in Gryt’s practice for years, such as his uniquely characteristic approach to the motif of landscape as an object or sculpture, works situated at the intersection of sculpture and other forms of artistic expression, or the phenomenon of signs, so important in his art. The presentation also features some of Gryt’s favourite sculpture materials: glass, stone, metal, light, etc. Although the individual elements of the exhibition can be viewed as fragments of a greater whole, these fragments, and their relationships with space, make up a multidimensional yet coherent and holistic artistic statement, which reveals the most important and characteristic features of Alojzy Gryt’s attitude to art.
Gryt has had several dozen individual exhibitions and participated in many important and prestigious collective presentations in Poland and abroad. He is an outstanding representative of surrealism in Wrocław, which he has been creatively developing in the spirit of minimalism and conceptualism. In his ascetic, intellectually sophisticated works he often uses materials such as stone, metal and glass, with light performing the function of another “medium” (works in the series Landscapes and Glass Mountains). He has also made ceramic sculptures-objects (e.g. Open Letter or Safety Pin). His installations often establish a multilayered dialogue with the venues (spaces) in which they are displayed. Using often subtle artistic interventions, Gryt is able to make a venue “speak” (Signs, exhibition at the City Gallery in Wrocław in 1997) or reveal a hidden aspect of its structure (Fountain in the Market Square in Wrocław, design – 1999, construction – 2001).
Alojzy Gryt (b. 18 April 1937 in Niedobczyce) is a sculptor, painter, drawer, maker of installations, objects and artworks connected with architecture. In 1956–1962 he studied at the Department of Architecture of Wrocław Polytechnic (diploma in 1962); in 1961–1965 he attended the State Higher School of Fine Arts (diploma work in architectural sculpture under the supervision of Apolinary Czepelewski, 1965). Since he was a student he has been professionally connected with the School (in 1962–1968 as an assistant to A. Czepelewski), since 1990 he has been professor of the State Higher School of Fine Arts, and since 1994 – full professor of the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław. He was the head of the Department of Sculpture and Spatial Actions and the Sculpture Department. He has also lectured at the Institute of Art of the Jan Długosz Academy in Częstochowa and the University of Environmental and Life Sciences in Wrocław (Landscape Architecture).