Against Aestheticization-Characteristics of Temporal_Public Art Based on Realizations Using Colored Aggregate
Przeciw estetyzacji: charakterystyka sztuki publicznej o charakterze czasowym
The significance of public art lies in its potential to shape the urban environment by introducing new content and possibilities within the city’s social and cultural space. A crucial aspect of public art is the active participation of its viewers. In this context, I would like to present several projects where colored aggregates were used as distinctive and interactive elements. The experience of these works is a synthesis of physical, tactile, visual, and symbolic meanings. These installations are not static; they unfold over time through the presence and actions of participants. Their structure embraces entropy—the natural movement from order to disorder—allowing the work to continuously transform, never returning to its initial state. This ongoing transformation embodies a living aesthetic process. What emerges from this dynamic interaction is what I describe as a composition of infinite color: an ever-evolving visual and social field where the elements—shapes, hues, textures—are constantly rearranged by human movement and engagement. The relational nature of these installations fosters temporary communities and moments of spontaneous creativity, challenging traditional boundaries between artist, audience, and artwork. Layered sculptural forms, reminiscent of stones or clouds, offer both compositional anchors and spaces for rest. Participants are invited to explore a sensory landscape—walking barefoot through a shifting terrain of textures and colors. In doing so, they co-create the artwork in real time, contributing to an open-ended, decentralized process. In an urban context where daily life is often governed by routines, roles, and social masks, these participatory installations briefly suspend those norms. Colored aggregates become tools of shared expression, allowing for collective play and reconfiguration. The entropy-driven evolution of the work mirrors the natural impermanence of human interaction—transforming public space into a site of aesthetic and relational experimentation.
Entropy as Relational Aesthetics
My artistic practice is grounded in working with colored aggregate — a material that is unstable, dispersed, multicolored, and ever-changing. Installations composed of thousands of grains of sand do not possess a singular, final form. Variability and lack of fixed shape are not flaws but the essence of this art — its driving force and core value. Each arrangement, each movement of the viewer, every instance of light or shadow alters the perception and structure of the work.This process-oriented character leads me to think of entropy as an aesthetic principle. Entropy here does not merely signify decay, but also an openness to unpredictability, chance, and the interplay of forces. The infinite color composition — as I call this method — is based on coexistence without fusion: color is not created through blending, but through adjacency, difference, and tension. Entropy, in this sense, is not destruction but a creative rule: it reveals beauty in irregularity, impermanence, and relationality. Each grain of aggregate has meaning only in the context of others — its color, position, and weight influence the whole, yet do not dominate it. In this way, the practice expands the understanding of relational aesthetics — not only as interpersonal dialogue (as in Nicolas Bourriaud's concept), but also as relations between matter and space, between the body and material, between affect and physicality. The viewer does not merely observe but participates: their presence becomes part of the artwork, their movement introduces changes, and their senses co-construct perception. These works do not remain in a single state — they disperse, transform, and often deliberately engage the community in the process of co-creation, which also makes them a space of shared experience. Not a dictated community, but one that arises — based on co-presence, co-feeling, and co-creation. Understood this way, entropy — as relational aesthetics — forms the philosophical and practical core of my work: an affirmation of change as form, of randomness as a principle of order, of community as a diverse yet coexisting totality.
ADAM KALINOWSKI