__ Walking on Glass as a Necessity "Many glasses will not crystallize even in the scale of the existence of the Universe" (according to Wikipedia). This is an exhibition in the museum that does not want to be museum-like. Through the way of presentation, the selection of works, and the style of communication with the viewer, it defends itself against museum-like stiffness. The title itself refers to an act of choice, which must be associated with hardness, determining the (in this case, museum) existence or disappearance. However, selection is something different from choice, although it seems that due to historical-literary events, there is something final in this word. There is also self-irony in it, which appears time and time again in this exhibition, making it surprisingly light and detached. To some extent, we are dealing here with a retrospective overview because Professor Paulina Komorowska-Birger presents her objects from a period of over 25 years of creative work. On the other hand, she also talks about private life because, in her art, artistic activity is inseparably intertwined with it. One might want to use a trivial comparison - like glass threads with ordinary ones, "taken" from the environment. Paulina Komorowska-Birger uses glass in her works, in its specific form of thin threads. The fragility of this material seems obvious, although at the same time, we see that it can endure a lot, requiring painstaking work. The artist's first "thread" creations struck with the Benedictine necessity of endurance over time. It was evident that this required a specific, visible, although actually impossible for the uninitiated to imagine, amount of time staring at the flame of the burner and precisely connecting thin elements. No, it's not about flaunting the difficulty of creation - it's just a reminder that we are dealing with an action in which there is undoubtedly a demiurgic element, creating in the light... The space of the "New Age" gallery at the Museum of the Lubusz Land is divided into 3 parts, each referring to a different area of reflection on creation, one's own art, social position, place in the lives of others, one's own world. Because the exhibition addresses all these threads, mixes them, separates them clearly, but also confuses the tracks, does not allow for uninteresting unequivocality. In the first room, we stand in front of a long strip of material rising towards the top, strewn with glass threads from broken forms, the shape of which is still somewhat preserved but already deformed. Like a sidewalk - a path, it invites us to real entry, (negating the museum's "do not enter," "do not touch" - here you can), to walk on the glass, to step on something that until recently was part of the work On the way..., with full caution brought to the Museum. The drop-cocoons contain photos, not clearly visible, enigmatic fragments whose shape, even if we decipher it, does not necessarily reveal their meanings. There is also a glass "box" filled with invitations to personal exhibitions, and under the material, the attentive viewer will find a large box, this time wooden, with unknown content, suggested by the title What else can you do with a window? Shown or hidden work? In the next room, we find three monitors with projections under the common title Contexts. On one of them, we see the process of creating the work At the end of the year, a laudation, because that's the name of the installation described above. The author, together with her assistant, throws glass cocoons together and sometimes separately, without respect, more with an eye to composition than with a desire to preserve the integrity of the objects. On the second monitor - documentation of the exhibition Wall of Tears, which took place in 1994 in an unfinished house at ul. Mieczykowa 7. It's a film more about the accompanying party; specific people appear, friends, colleagues, relatives, having fun, talking, not particularly concerned with the weight of the moment, although we see a monumental work, a several-meter "column" freely hanging in the stairwell. It is a typical documentation, made without assuming the passage of time, the inevitable departure of people, objects, shapes, showing the power but also the helplessness of mechanical recording over the years. And another documentation - an action in which the officially dressed artist washes her car in the gallery. This self-ironic work from the exhibition Bureaucrat in the BWA gallery in Zielona Góra once again shows the distance of Komorowska-Birger, the full awareness of the conventionality, transience, relativity of events, and at the same time the coherence and indivisibility of creation, learning, performing functions, social role, etc. Next to it is the work Berecik, the headgear used for many years by the artist, from which a bundle of glass threads emerges. I think this is probably her only self-portrait. In contrast, very close to the pedestal with the museum shade, under which we see a small Cukierniczka (from the collection of the National Museum in Poznań), complemented by a glass and metal part of a real pastry chef, a kind of conservation repair or glass reproduction of crystalline content. And behind the museum pillars with a cord, a typical element of a "real" museum exhibition, works from 1988-2015, nearly 20 objects, often shown at individual and group exhibitions worldwide. Selection, choice, rather as in the title Museum objects, not living art. Here we have typical works by the artist "preserving" ordinary objects - an old typewriter, a small copy of the Venus de Milo, an old metal coat hanger with an old coat, a tin stove, etc. There are also elements related to the husband's profession or the artist's own health problems, what I am telling you now and what is hidden from the viewer, practically impossible to see because of the museum link. Works seemingly frozen because the technique used by the artist requires them to be constantly replenished and carefully preserved. This makes it difficult for them to be museumized, but it also somewhat provokes them to fight this fragility. There are also cages for the most ordinary things - leaves, nutshells, some unidentified pieces, fragments, remnants. Paulina Komorowska-Birger protects her environment, her world, the closest and the one in which we all live in glass cages. She stops time and shapes in them, knowing perfectly well that it is futile. Glass protects with its luminosity, not durability. The cage can be broken with one move, although the light it contains remains; it can be recreated again and again. This is not pessimistic art, although the awareness of inevitable passing is immanent in it. The artist believes in art provided it exists in real life, not as parallel activity. She uses a difficult, impermanent material, ungrateful in processing, requiring patience and functioning best in the museum, a place that naturally preserves and stops but is also incredibly the embodiment of light, the source, and condition of life on Earth. The artist, aware of this, knowing about the inevitability of museum stoppage, at the same time consistently avoids placing herself and her art in the "showcase." In this exhibition, there is constant self-reflection but also a calm joy of the possibility and necessity of creating as a life activity. Walking on glass is like walking, simply.

Wojciech Kozłowski, Selection, UNIVERSITY OF ZIELONA GÓRA No. 9-1 |228-230| December 2015-January 2016, p.32-33