Colours of lost time

The artworks comprising the series "Colours of Lost Time" were created by layering illustrations and photographs of extinct bird species onto a rotating disc, which the artist then set in motion and photographed. The colours of the circles that emerge from this procedure blend gradually, marking their repeated revolutions. This sui generis record of motion and the passage of time is simultaneously a chronicle of mourning. “In Bownik’s vision, the bold, saturated colours of avian plumage dissolve and coalesce into a spinning spectrogram. Extinct species are brought to life in the form of an inscrutable, shadow-casting spectrum. The birds/spectres no longer bear names of their own, just as our dictionaries lack the words to describe the myriad colours of lost time,” Grażyna Bastek writes in the text accompanying the exhibition. In his commentary to one of the pieces reprinted in the album, Bownik revisits the event that precedes the moment of naming: “Abstract and accelerated dying out has become reality. What is the colour of loss?” he writes, adding: “I imagine everyday life in which, on odd days, all the news stations on the blue planet talk about death for 24 hours — but only about death caused by human civilization and its consequences for the world.” The album of Bownik’s artworks comprises 35 pieces from the Colours of Lost Time series, an essay by the art historian Grażyna Bastek, and a commentary by the artist himself. Bownik worked on the series from 2017 to 2019, and first presented the works at WGW in 2019.