Jarnuszkiewicz's plays are never flashy or showy, nor are his set designs, except perhaps Hanuszkiewicz's early Balladyna with its famous red hondas.It is actually elite theatre, for a narrow audience, played sometimes even for a single spectator, created to bring out a mood of intimacy and contemplation. Theatre touching on universal issues, asking ultimate questions, full of anxiety and premonition of the end, speaking of the fragility of human existence, of fear, of inevitability. Operating with a sparing, purist style, where the image is the object of contemplation and its primary function is to evoke catharsis. In many stagings, the set is created by light rather than material objects. There is only a single object, which thus becomes exceptionally significant. In the set design for To Damascus, designed by Katarzyna Jarnuszkiewicz, individual props – a bed, a piano, a desk, a tin washbasin – were placed in an austere Scandinavian wooden chamber. The ceiling is suspended so low there that the audience has the impression of watching a cramped box into which the unreal actors have been shoved. In his later play, Homework, only the table and chair are prsent, the rest is tension built between the viewer and Marcin's alter ego, the puppet. In Wielkie Pytanie at the Pinokio Theatre in Łódź, the set consists of a few expressive clouds and rocks suspended in black space. Here, Jarnuszkiewicz introduces the aesthetics of Japanese sumi-e, where emptiness plays a key role in stimulating the imagination. Jarnuszkiewicz avoided excess of elements. He felt that it distracted the viewer's attention unnecessarily.Jarnuszkiewicz's concepts are always mimetic, always referring to elements of a real landscape or interior. Jarnuszkiewicz does not like abstraction.Jarnuszkiewicz's theatre, based on the theories of Kleist, Maeterlinck, Craig and Grotowski, is a constant experiment forcing the viewer to fully engage their emotions and intellect.For me, this is a special exhibition. I knew Martin well, for many years. For several years, we worked at the same faculty, but we actually met at an open-air workshop with students from the faculty of stage design of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, at the worskhop house in Dłużew. I had a painting workshop, while Marcin had a stage design workshop. We started talking in our spare time. It quickly became apparent that we had surprisingly similar reflections about art.Martin was a remarkable man and creator. When he worked on something, it was with full commitment. Fragile as a child in life's affairs, as an artist he was very strong. I had a great understanding of this, in many ways we were similar, we had the same view of art, an opinion on the role of sensitivity in an artist.Certainly Marcin Jarnuszkiewicz cannot be pigeonholed, he was an outsider and felt that way. And I think he liked the feeling. Intelligent, witty, sensitive, with a great deal of knowledge and awareness of the meaning of life, disenchanting fears about death (both his own and the audience of his plays). He spoke and made beautiful plays on the subject, such as the Duck, Death and the Tulip, just revived at the Baj Theatre.He believed in intuition and often spoke of it as an important element in both the creative process and in teaching. The students adored him, perhaps because, in addition to his extraordinary commitment to his work as an educator, and in spite of his professorial position, he spoke quite often: “I don't know, try it, see, let's find out.” He sent them to other professors for consultation, but only those he respected as artists. He was not afraid that his authority would suffer.He was a figure with controversial opinions on music or the visual arts. He only acknowledged classical music and disapproved of abstract art, reasoning that only figurative art could be experienced, which I objected to. He listened attentively to my arguments in long discussions. It impressed me that he always listened, with attention and curiosity, as seriously to a student as to an experienced artist, that he was curious about other people's opinions and views, in order to be able to engage in a discourse on a particular subject. I also envied his ability to talk about his weaknesses, his fears.During one of our many conversations, Marcin said something that stuck with me, becasue they were wise words, true in their simplicity: “To judge whether a soup is good, you don't need to know what kind of soup it is and what it's made of.” He applied this saying to how art should be received. We were of identical opinion on this issue.In addition to set design elements, the exhibition at the Kordegarda includes hand-drawings for several plays. This is a curiosity, as Marcin had been reluctant to draw for years, claiming he couldn't do it and leaving it to others. But this exhibition is an attempt to show a fragment from the life of a very interesting artist, set designer, director and, above all, a very real, uncompromising person who loved life to the end, and perhaps that is why he was afraid of death…Elżbieta Banecka, curator of the exhibitionCurator: Elżbieta BaneckaCoordinator: Katarzyna HaberOrganizers: Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, National Center for Culture, Kordegarda. Gallery of the National Center for Culture