Duplacena77
02 jul – 16 ago 2025
Curator: Mario Gutiérrez Cru

‘It’s not the eye that sees, but the mind that reconstructs the image.’ (Rybczyński)

The work of Zbigniew Rybczyński (b. 1949, Łódź, Poland) is an anomaly in the history of cinema and video art. A young film-maker of just 25 who, in the middle of communist Poland in the 1970s, imagined a visual language that still seems ahead of its time today. With obsessive precision and extraordinary technical skill, he explored the possibilities of the moving image from a radically innovative perspective.

His films are strange, almost hypnotic, built on repetition, the loop and the accumulation of characters who seem condemned to move within closed architectures, trapped in circular time. But beyond his technical virtuosity, there is an expressive urgency in his work, a certain fury contained in the mechanics of his images, as if cinema were a form of resistance against the monotony of reality.

Sound plays an essential role in this experience. From the rhythmic montage of SOUP (1974) to the television cacophony of MEDIA (1980), Rybczyński transforms audio into a structural element of his films, not as mere accompaniment, but as a pulse that marks the internal rhythm of each work. Similarly, the use of colour in pieces like MEIN FENSTER (1979) breaks down the image into layers of light and distortion, anticipating digital experiences that would emerge decades later.

The exhibition at DUPLACENA77, curated by Mario Gutiérrez Cru, director of the moving image platform PROYECTOR, brings together a selection of his earliest and most influential pieces. From the initial experimentation with montage and sound in SOUP, through the labyrinthine structure of NOWA KSIAZKA (1975) and the vertigo of movement in OJ! NIE MOGE SIE ZATRZYMACI! (1975), to the manipulation of the electronic image in MEIN FENSTER and MEDIA (1980). It all culminates with TANGO (1981), a masterpiece of animation that synthesises his exploration of time and space and which, despite winning the Oscar in 1983, remains a hidden gem for many viewers.

Despite his impact on audiovisual language, Rybczyński‘s name remains less recognised than it should be. His innovations in the moving image resonate in contemporary cinema, music videos and the digital manipulation we take for granted today. However, his work deserves to be revisited not just as a technical milestone, but as a unique way of thinking about time and the image. As he himself said:

‘Cinema is not just a window on the world, but a construction of possible worlds.’ Rybczyński

Duplacena77
Regueirão dos Anjos 77A, 1150-260 Lisboa, Portugal