The exhibition in the JU Nature Education Centre (NEC) consists of works by artists from Wrocław, Gdańsk, and Kraków, related to selected items from the NEC collection and collections from botanical gardens, as well as various zoological, palaeontological, mineralogical, botanical and archaeological exhibits.

The artists have utilised the aesthetic potential of particular exhibits and biological motifs, which have been assigned a symbolic meaning, allowing a dialogue between science and art, the present and the past.

The exhibition is aimed to provide an in-depth analysis of these interactions, conducted by means of visual arts, that is, works by painters and graphic designers. The artists whose works were selected for the exhibition had adopted very different approaches to biological, geological, anthropological and archaeological motifs: from a very classic approach (slightly transformed, easily recognisable natural elements) to a major transformation of biological content based on an intellectual discourse between the biological form and its interpretation. The authors of the exhibited works are characterised by diverse aesthetic sense and preferred form of expression.

Artists:

• Graduates of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków: Alex Banaś, Magdalena Chmielek, Grzegorz Bugaj;
• Eugeniusz Gepert Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław: Prof. Łukasz Huculak, Dr hab. Anna Kołodziejczyk, Dr Kamil Moskowczenko
• Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk: Dr hab. Marcin Zawicki

Curator: Prof. Bartosz J. Płachno, Jagiellonian University