The Graduation Tower of Art by R. Kuśmirowski, one of the most important and valued works of this artist, is a monumental sculptural installation created in 2014. Its form, referring to salt graduation towers, or thorn houses, installed in health resorts, fits perfectly into the context of the leisure and recreational character of the park by Strzeszyńskie Lake. The idea of Kuśmirowski’s Graduation Tower of Art addresses the issues that the artist has been dealing with for years: the palimpsestic nature of individual and collective memory, the question of time and its passage, the falsification and impermanence of ideas and objects (including artefacts), and the extravagance of the material culture. Critics call Robert Kuśmirowski “a brilliant imitator”, “a forger and manipulator of reality”. Most of his art is based on reconstructing and copying old objects, documents, photographs, or rather creating their misleadingly similar imitations. The Graduation Tower of Art combines traditional, visually attractive form with topical and intriguing content which makes you wonder.
The work has been exhibited by many prestigious cultural institutions (e.g. the National Museum in Kraków, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, Lublin Castle Museum in Lublin, by Art-Attack 2015/SPACE in Tbilisi, in University Square in Lviv or in front of the National Forum of Music in Wrocław). Kuśmirowski considers Poznań Visual Park to be an ideal place for the permanent exhibition of his object, which – in line with the artist’s intention – will over the years be slowly absorbed by nature.
