The activities of the Lescer Art Center are closely related to the local environment - the place where the gallery is located, as well as its interior space. This is why we have decided to open the exhibition dedicated to the place. Zalesie Górne, as seen by a young photographer Jan Urbaniak, does not have much in common with the image of a summer resort or a place of idyllic relaxation in nature. Urbaniak focuses on forgotten, decaying, rejected places, while capturing their strangeness and ambiguity.
The photo project Closed Burgh (closed town) was carried out by an eighteen-year-old photographer in 2018. As the artist says: I walked aimlessly around Zalesie Górne and the surrounding area and fell in love. Urbaniak shows both known places and those that one passes by indifferently, because they became part of the everyday landscape, or, on the other hand, have been erased from it. Photographs restore subjectivity to these places and mark their presence.
The term burgh, in the literal sense - a town, is an old name of an administrative unit in Scotland, referring to the administrative division of the area. In fact, it meant just a small town. Urbaniak in Zalesie Górne discovered a kind of local, close-knit community, which, like the place itself, creates a unique climate of Zalesie Górne. Calm, distant, cut off (also in a literal sense - through the forest) from larger urban centers the place creates a specific mood, reflected in a series of intimate photographs.
The opening of the exhibition was be accompanied by the premiere of the Closed Burgh zine - a photobook by Jan Urbaniak.
Jan Urbaniak
Born in 2000 in Warsaw, lives and works in Zalesie Górne.
Project co-financed by the Piaseczno municipality
Partner of the exhibition: RELAX FOTO - PROLAB
Curator: Ewa Sułek
Producer: Paweł Zaręba
