Jasiek Zborucki is an individual who can appreciate the beauty of the Polish speech on daily basis, who eagerly studies its nuances and who’s this beauty and linguistic correctness indefatigable protector. He’s probably well known to all his workmates as an unbearable purist who points out, without pleasure but pleasantly, their real and alleged errors. However, this nice doctor Jekyll has also got his rather less pleasant face. He reveals it when he starts to rhyme. It’s basically there, in a metre following form, where he commits all his crimes against our ears. With every liking he pokes around impossible to bare dissonances. With some apparent prurience, marquis-de-Sade-like premeditation, and the joy which seemingly equals, as Freud put it, the joy of a child playing with its pooh, he flounders in the worst word-formation sins. The simple fact that this nightmare-rooted lingual matter is used to define quite nice creatures, is surely not this crazy taxonomy user merit, but the merit of these creatures themselves…
The relation between the image and the word happens to be an unsolved mystery. And stays so, not letting us presume what awful verses might have been the inspiration for so wonderful pictures. The extent of illustrators’ ears annoyance could have influenced their unspeakable beauty.
Jasiek Zborucki’s attitude to language stays quite in analogy to his attitude to nature. A real Saint Francis, indeed. He admires any daisy, sympathises with any sparrow, not that much with a earthworm, but with a butterfly of fly for sure. He expresses this in his rather good-looking photos, as well as seeding fragrant thistle and building insect houses in the garden. However, when the dusk falls, probably judging by himself, he’s quite likely to suspect event the purest lily of the wildest excesses. Maybe quite rightly. Even Linnaeus didn’t manage to avoid it.
Beata Zborucka
JASIEK ZBORUCKI & His Friends
Key for certain species identification (extremely useful)
Illustrations by Katarzyna Bogucka, Jacek Frąckiewicz, Stanisław Gajewski, Jerzy Głuszek, Ryszard Kaja, Wojciech Kołyszko, Sebastian Kubica, Paweł Kuczyński, Mirosław Kuźma, Małgorzata Lazarek, Leszek Ołdak, Grzegorz Szumowski, Magdalena Wosik and Tomasz „Biedrona” Broda
VIS à VIS Restaurant, ul. Młynarska 7
Exhibition opening, 16th June 2017 (Friday) 8.00 p.m.
Nightmarish rhymes are still waiting for their English translator, so for the time being, we suggest seeing the illustrations.
