Referring to the Faculty of Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw we can apply a range of perspectives. Depending on one’s point of view, we can glorify the past (highlighting the history, merits of the respectable Professors), or affirm the future. Much less we appreciate the value and positive aspects of the present day. Probably due to ordinary human factor and a natural need for distance; in the future we perceive possibilities for change and potential directions for development, and the past seems brighter because memories are accompanied with awareness that that temporal continuum cannot be changed, and we do not have much impact on past forms.
Whenever I am asked to comment on the Faculty, I have the impression that I am supposed to conduct a spectral analysis of light – armed with a prism, analysing the changing directions of the waves and trends, I’m trying to say what happens on the other side.
As a dean of the Faculty of Graphic Arts I would like to note that Graphic Arts as a part of the Academy are indeed institutional in nature, which is expressed through the operation, management, structure, bureaucracy, but the uniqueness and character of the Faculty of Graphics comes from the people who are behind all of this. And I don’t mean a nameless crowd, but the specific individuals whose personalities, knowledge and authority support the Faculty. The present-day Faculty differs from the one five, ten, or fifteen years ago. A range of opportunities changes quickly, the tools, means of expression evolve, all due to overall dynamics of transformations taking place in the world of art and media. When I discuss the Faculty of Graphic Arts, before my eyes I have a prism which refracts white light into a colourful rainbow spectrum. For me, it is a symbol indicating the multiplicity of possibilities, the interactions of various forces and, above all, a room for dialogue, or rather a polyphony reflecting the hidden, inner harmony.