Józef Robakowski, Józef Robakowski, No. 19 from the series Handshake 1981, photograph on light-sensitive canvas, 38,5 x 46 cm, 38,5 x 46 cm

Jozef Robakowski writes: “The motive for starting the Handshake action was the date of 13 December 1981, the first day of the declaration of martial law decreed by our government. In our ‘reality’ this was the moment when we all lost our sense of security. A handshake with people associated with me was the only gesture I could make at that time. It gave me an opportunity to bond with other people. I labelled my ‘paintings’ with consecutive numbers from 1-24. They were created in a cyclical way, and that’s how they were entrusted to friends” (from: http://robakowski.eu/p28.html).

Robakowski’s Handshake No. 19 is in the Galeria Studio Collection. It is not a painting, but a photograph; although it was created without a camera and without film, it meets the definition of the genre. It is a classic drawing with light. On a canvas covered with a layer of light-sensitive material, the right hand is immersed in emulsion. A sudden, quick gesture: a moment of contact. Twenty-four such works were created in this way—traces of presence. They were all given away. Some were passed on, others stayed with friends. The print with the number 19, according to the inventory made by Robakowski, originally belonged to the cameraman Tomasz Snopkiewicz.

In a text accompanying the creation of this work, Robakowski went on to write: “I hope that in the future, when the martial law decree is no longer in force, I can ask my confidants to lend these ‘paintings’ for exhibition. Then we will see what kind of human fate has been linked to the object/symbol” (from: http://robakowski.eu/p28.html).

At Galeria Studio in 2021, six works from the Handshake series, including the one from our collection and five from the collection of Osman Djajadisastra (Nos. 4, 6, 10, 18 and 20), were presented for the first time in a larger grouping—forty years after their creation—in the exhibition “Out of Joint,” curated by Arkadiusz Półtorak.  Its theme was how we imagine social relationships and how art can sustain them. The open hand became a renewed symbol of potential affirmative interpersonal connection.

Dorota Jarecka