FROM TO, Tadeusz Sławek

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The prepositions ‘from’ and ‘to’ outline the beginning and the ending. They define the territorial and time range thereby organizing the reality. Both these prepositions are at the service of god Terminus who placed the border stones and was the patron in the process of defining the kingdoms and the dominions. Nevertheless, the project by the Artist by being somehow unlimited terminates this service. What happens in this project, which could be referred to as defining a certain area and meaning, is being simultaneously invalidated […]

        Therefore neither ‘from’ nor ‘to’ can be complemented and completely formed as ‘from’ or ‘to’. The artist is trying to show the intricate structure of these apparently unambiguous concepts of ‘beginning’ and ‘ending’. The former specifies the sphere ‘from’ when we say ‘from here’ referring to the beginning of a certain space. While saying ‘from today’ we think about the beginning of a certain time line. ‘To’ is the twin equivalent of that in the sphere of the ‘ending’ – ‘by here’ but no any further, ‘by tomorrow’ but not later. Nevertheless, the uncertainty introduced to the inside of ‘from’ indicates that the ‘beginning’ has been already evaluated by the ‘ending’, whereas in the ‘ending’ the sources of the ‘beginning’ are concealed as if the beginning was supposed to be complemented by the ending and the ending was torn from the inside by the beginning […]

        FROM TO: the figure of the finite character of human fate limited by the dates of birth and death. However, there is also a question: would it be possible that there is the time after a certain ‘ending’, what kind of chronology could encompass the time ‘after’ the time, after the given time has reached its own ending? At this moment, Stanisław Dróżdż proposes the answer – the time is, in fact, ‘inhumane’ as it does not accept the limitations which are necessary to the human being. It is the time, where ‘to’ immediately begins its new course becoming the form ‘from’. Thereby the infinity slips into the finite realms of FROM TO.

The fragment of the essay FROM TO The Lesson on Prepositions [in:] Stanisław Dróżdż, FROM TO. Timely-Spatially. Concept Shapes. Concrete Poetry. Gallery Appendix2, Warsaw 2009 [exhibition catalogue].