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Exhibitions
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AT THE VERY CENTRE OF ATTENTION, ART OF CENTRAL ASIA, Jerzy Ludwiński, CCA Collection, T Kawamata, Lawrence Weiner, J Holzer, Joanna Rajkowska, Museum of the Castle, |
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W SAMYM CENTRUM
UWAGI/ |
Exhibition opening - 24.01, 6.00
p.m. |
Project under the honorary patronage of the President of the Republic of Poland PART 4:
Both Ryszard Górecki, Jadwiga
Sawicka, and the Twożywo group combine
images with text, thus offering a new philosophy of thinking
about the picture - not only as an object of aesthetic
contemplation, but also as a more or less literal communiqué.
This strategy can be interpreted as a continuation of the tradition
of visual poetry, and the reference to poster art gains a broader
dimension here, associated with the expressiveness and formal
modesty, or even minimalism of the means of expression, as
well as a shift directly towards the viewer. What is emphasised
is
the visual aspect of the word, but also the discursive element
of the picture - and the tension built between those two dimensions
opens further interpretation possibilities and prevents one
from falling into the trap of excessive literality.
The system defines the public space, which represents an important point of reference for all artists featured in Part IV. They enter into dialogue with it, emphasising the possible strategies of opposition and resistance against existing order (Górecki), penetrating the structure of linguistic patterns in search of hidden meanings (Twożywo), or visualising social neurosis and the clash of negative emotions in the human mass (Sawicka). The artists' socially committed attitude is clearly based on a reversal of the dominant model of unidirectional communication, typical for advertising or the mass media - and on its transformation into a bi-directional discourse. A key and active role is played in this process by the viewer/recipient, for whom the artefact is to be but a starting point for a reflection on the system of contemporary culture and one's place in it.
Project realized with supplementary financing from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute under the SIGN OF THE TIMES Operational Program Exclusive Technological Sponsor: SAMSUNG Sponsors: KNAUF, NOBILES Media partners: |
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SAMYM CENTRUM UWAGI/AT THE VERY CENTRE OF ATTENTION |
Project under the honorary patronage of the President of the Republic of Poland PART 5: The guiding theme of part V of the at the very centre of attention project is the experience of space, whether physical, intellectual, in imagination or in memory. For some time now, architecture has served as an important reference point for the visual arts, through the references to its, it would seem, constitutive properties, such as rationality, utility, or subordination to geometric rules. For the three presented artists - Maciej Kurak, Monika Sosnowska, and Piotr Wyrzykowski - the starting point are the entrenched, normative relations between spatial forms and their subjective, individual perception. The works of those artists often assume the form of semi-architectural installations, in which the important part is the individual experience of space that is distorted, subjected to interventions and arrangements emphasising architecture's hidden potential - associated with its emotional and mental dimension. This leads to the question what architecture is or what it can be, and how our relation with the world shapes itself up towards it. For the artists participating in part V of the project, architecture isn't a synonym of rational, constructivistic and optimistic thinking in modernist spirit. Instead, it becomes a screen for that which is sensed, subconscious, associated with a vague sense of threat. Monika Sosnowska's interior appears suddenly in Warsaw's urban space, in the context of the stylistically cohesive socialist-realistic MDM buildings, in order to undermine this architectural context by applying new rules that cannot be fully comprehended. The existing spatial and visual order is deconstructed and replaced with a dreamlike scenery that is the result of a sculptural, or in fact designer-like, intervention with architectural form.
Piotr Wyrzykowski, in turn, recalls the image of the Kiev subway, detached in a way from its original function and reduced to the form of a hostile, subterranean world, close to fictional film or computer-game landscapes, whose power and eeriness potential lies precisely in its real existence.
Maciej Kurak, finally, plays with the audience's potential expectations about how exhibition space should be used, which results in an ironic and absurd (non)functionalism of architecture and institution.
Referring to the relation of sensory and emotional experience, modifying and tweaking habits and norms, the artists engage in dialogue with architecture as a reality-constructing form. The resulting distortions and irregularities make it necessary not only to redefine and renegotiate the shape of the outside world, but above all our own status. The work Tired Room by Monika Sosnowska realised for Freud Museum in Vienna, in Warsaw presented thanks to the courtesy of Collezione La Gaia
Exclusive Technological Sponsor: SAMSUNG Sponsors: KNAUF, NOBILES, KLER Media partners:
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ART OF CENTRAL
ASIA |
Exhibition opening: 24.02, 6.00 p.m |
Vyacheslav Akhunov/ Sergey Tichina, Said Atabekov, Exhibition organized in cooperation with the Kurama Gallery, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
Maxim Boronilov and Roman Maskalev, employ unusually poetic means to show the brutal gulf that divides post-Soviet reality from that of the French capital. The installation "Toward an Understanding of Limitation" consists of drawings and objects by Rustam Khalfin (founder and one of the leading lights of the Kazakh art scene) and the young artist Julia Tikhonova. In this project the artists have sought to demonstrate the results of their explorations and research of the field of view. The fundamental idea of the project is that of "ecological" drawing, which Khalfin drew from the lectures of the erstwhile student of Casimir Malevitch, Russian artist Vladimir Sterligov. Passage into a new mode of perception is shown as depending on the creation of a space containing nothing but the basic plasticity of forms: simple movement arcs, fragments of one's own body. One of the chief 'protagonists' in this experiment is the human hand - stretched and extended or clenched into a fist. A hand formed into a tube is portrayed as the simplest optical device. In addition to Khalfin's drawings, the work includes films which the artist made with Julia Tikhonova - "Barbarians of the North": Part I - "Bride and Groom", and Part II - "Love Races". Unusually beautiful and visually alluring works, they embody an effort to reconstruct the art of lovemaking. 'Barbarians of the North' is the term which the Chinese used to describe the nomads from whom they strove to isolate themselves by building the Great Wall. Almagul Menlibayeva drew the subject matter for her "On the Road" from Sufi texts and Central Asian legends, but also from the realities of contemporary Kazakhstan, which is a land of endless steppes traversed by endless roads. Her installation represents a steppe (soil-covered floor) which acts as the background for a number of video works in which the sound of passing automobiles and galloping horses mix with the voices and singing of the women who ride them. The installation incorporates video documentation of Menlibayeva's previous performances: "Apa", "Steppen Baroque", "Wild Sheep Chase", "Jihad and On the Firing Range".
In "Trans-Siberian Amazons" Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djoumaliev explore a characteristic phenomenon of the new post-Soviet reality: women petty traders who are forced to travel vast distances and cross many borders in their efforts to earn a living. Their primary trade routes include the rail lines leading from China in to Siberia and across Central Asia. They are most easily encountered today in the northbound trains of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Easily recognizable for their plaid woven plastic bags full of Chinese-made goods, they while away the travel time singing nostalgic songs. Sergey Maslov wrote his "Survival Instructions" in April of 1998. The exhibition includes a logical extension of Maslov's project, that is, a translation (dating from 2005) of the Instructions into the fifteen official languages of the former republics of the USSR. Now every citizen of the former Soviet Union can read these guidelines in his or her native tongue and - provided they find something of use in them - apply the instructions. Visitors to the exhibition at the CCA can also read Maslov's instructions in Polish and English. With "I Want to Go to Hollywood" by Alexander Nikolaev, which consists of the artist's demo tapes, documents and biography, we learn the true story of one of Tashkent's inhabitants. What makes this Uzbek different is his desire to travel to Hollywood and become an actor. He produces innumerable demo tapes and incessantly takes pictures for his portfolio. He then compiles these and sends them to various Hollywood studios, which invariably reject his application. "Kazakhstan - Blue Period" is a cycle of photographs by Yelena Vorobyeva and Viktor Vorobyev which follows the replacement of the color red - a symbol of the Soviet era - by the color blue. The flag of Kazakhstan is now turquoise, and as a result a new set of stereotypes have appeared in the minds of Kazakhs: blue is now the country's most popular color. Everything in Kazakhstan is as blue as the sky: fences, roofs, domes, doors and all manner of other objects that come together to form the visual reality.
Said
Atabekov's video
"Sniper" centers on the motif of a child who rests in a cradle
that incorporates as one
of its
parts a Kalashnikov
machine gun. This juxtaposition symbolizes a meeting of two opposing
archetypes: birth and death, defenselessness and violence. The
woman poised above the cradle is Atabekov's wife, the infant
and teenagers visible in the background are their children. In
Atabekov's
mythical world, the archaic and the contemporary whirl around
in a vicious circle where the universal and subjective, historical
and personal intertwine and combine. The contemplative films
of Vyacheslav
Akhunov,
produced jointly with Sergey
Tichina, incorporate
numerous mythological themes and very skillfully reveal the spirituality
of Central Asia. Ascent metaphorically demonstrates how obstacles
are overcome in the drive toward the Absolute. "Corner" on the
other hand emphasizes the link between spiritual exploration
and human
existence, which in reality is determined by sharp angles ("angles
of non-understanding"). In "Clay Fish" images of clay fish dissolving
in water combine with those of real fish in a stream on the site
of a temple reference the creation of Man and the eternal rhythms
of nature. EXHIBITION:
Media partners: Gazeta Wyborcza, AMS, onet.pl
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