Wow. Degree Show of Visual Communication PBŚ

WOW. Before it becomes a judgment, it is a reaction. A moment when the gaze stops, a brief interruption in the continuity of looking. Something makes us direct our attention there, out of many images, messages and stimuli. The title of the exhibition therefore does not describe the presented projects. It suggests rather how to look at them. WOW is here neither the end of looking nor a simple expression of delight. It is its beginning.

Every exhibition begins with a choice. It draws objects out of a larger whole, sets them side by side and tells the viewer: look here. In the case of WOW, however, this gesture happened earlier. Before the projects reached the gallery, their authors had themselves decided what they wanted to give their attention to, what to talk about and what visual language to use for it.

A diploma is a particular moment of choice, because it reveals not only how young designers design, but also what they look at. Viewed together, these choices form a landscape of attention of this particular group of young designers. Not everyone looks in the same direction, and that is precisely what matters.

One can look and not see. Julia Bogusz turns her gaze to endangered animal species that are overlooked, among other reasons, because they do not fit our ideas of what is attractive. Her project raises a question that can be applied to the whole exhibition: what draws our attention, and what remains beyond its reach? Visual communication can sustain existing hierarchies of visibility, but it can also deliberately disrupt them.

In Miriam Kornacki's work, attention becomes confrontation. The animation brings out of silence the experience of domestic violence and the stigmatisation of its victims. Karolina Najdowska and Marta Bednarek address experiences related to health and the female body, Anna Eich the perspective of people on the autism spectrum, and Anna Mocydlarz combines neurodiversity with the language of Kraków legends. How something is shown is never indifferent.

Visual communication can bring out of the background experiences and problems that are easy to overlook.

But drawing attention can also be designed. Katarzyna Sobala, taking up the topic of cardiovascular disease prevention, gives up communication based on fear. She seeks a language that will hold a young viewer's attention and lead them onward, from the first contact with the image towards information. Aleksandra Szpot uses an animated metaphor to speak about the pressure of productivity, and Natalia Zboracka reverses the established narrative about video games, showing their positive possibilities. It is therefore not only about what will be said. It also matters how to make someone want to look.

Many projects grow out of everyday experience. Agnieszka Paluch and Filip Baranowski take up social issues, Małgorzata Pankau and Mariusz Tyczyński examine functioning in the digital environment, and Anastazja Baran and Mateusz Włodarzewski address everyday needs and habits. Martyna Mandra, Maja Kaźnica and Aleksandra Budnik turn toward the relationship between people and their environment, from what is closest and easily overlooked to the imagining of possible futures.

For others, memory and culture are the starting point. Dominika Ptak works with a personal archive and Lemko heritage, Izabela Puchowska returns to local legends, and Oliwia Berendt enters into dialogue with literature through the language of comics. In visual communication, the new does not always mean what did not exist before. Sometimes it begins with looking again.

At a certain point, however, attention turns toward visual communication itself.

Jan Kępiński and Julian Kurzyk start from their interest in comics as a language and from the meeting of European and Asian narrative traditions. Their joint project is a search for their own form of expression and an exploration of the medium's possibilities in practice.

Olga Woźniakowska asks the question differently: can light become a language of communication? Her installations take visual identity beyond the surface of graphics, into object, space and experience. In the gallery, the message is no longer only something to which...