SZCZECIN.- Following the exhibition Sanyofication. The Miracle of Representation at the Muzeum Sztuki (Art Museum) in Łódź, Grupa Budapeszt continues exploring the 2½ dimension. They look into the structure, rules of action and aporias of the world, which has existed for centuries in parallel with the three-dimensional world that we have known, and that has been theorized and practiced by dozens of scientists and artists, from Tycho Brahe to Ken Jacobs. The 2½D world is a two-dimensional world that constantly produces illusory 3D objects. And vice versa: it is a world of three dimensions which camouflages 3D objects by flattening them and merging them into the background. The exhibition in Łódź focused on a two-dimensional world leaning towards a three dimensional one. In Szczecin, the artists go in the opposite direction, starting with the familiar 3D world and reducing it by half a dimension to show a number of camouflage strategies. The exhibition features several new works by Grupa Budapeszt, from sculptures and paintings, through films and objects, to light and sound installations.

Edwin A. Abbott writes in one of the opening sentences of his book Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions: ”Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows – only hard and with luminous edges (…).”

If, according to the above, flatland is a land of shadow that is not cast by a body, the land surrounding Tadzio in the exhibition space at TRAFO is the world of bodies that deprive each other of shadows. It may be viewed as a territory of perfect camouflage, a place where all heterogeneous elements fit so perfectly it is impossible to distinguish them from one another. Others may perceive this area as puzzles – an arrangement of components with one possible configuration in which none of them is redundant. Both interpretations are right since every object in the 2½D reality has a double identity – it is both itself and the camouflage it provides for other object that can conceal itself in such camouflage in a precisely defined relationship to the first object. In other words, each orange half has only one other half to match. It drifts towards the second half, to stopping in it, to stillness and fulfillment. Needless to say, the other half is not the other half of the same orange, but an empty space to which it “clings” to become invisible. The words quoted above could be paraphrased in the following manner:

”Imagine Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures unable to move about in space, since they immediately begin to create new shapes and connections with other figures, thereby losing their identity. Imagine a space in which they remain static and so perfectly adjacent that nothing else can fit into it, not even an ubiquitous look.”