„Teatr jest formą mojego życia”. Leszek Mądzik

The article discusses the work of Leszek Mądzik, focusing on an analysis of the exhibition Światło i Mrok (Light and Darkness) created by the artist at the Silesian Museum in Katowice. The author treats the exhibition as the artist’s last conversation with his audience. This interpretation leads the essay to present the artist’s entire oeuvre as a multi-layered self-portrait. During the fifty years of the KUL Artistic Scene of the Catholic University of Lublin, the director became the only person whose image was identified with the phenomenon of this non-institutional theatre. Federico Ferrari and Jean-Luc Nancy, in their psychoanalytical analysis of the author’s position in the work, sought to discover, through images or photographs, a new, hitherto hidden incarnation of the author. The method of reasoning borrowed from them allowed Mądzik’s work to be presented in a different light, showing the hard work of the director, who consistently constructed his own presence for half a century to finally become the main character of the images he created.