text:
Forest on a Comet
Forest on a Comet
Curator: Anna Kędziora
Artists: Katarzyna Wąsowska & Magdalena Andrynowska
The opening is accompanied by a concert by Cristian Varás
Opening: 14 October 2016, 7 pm, concert: 9 pm.
Guided tour: 27 October 2016, 6 pm (Polish), 7 pm (English)
Exhibition dates: 14 – 30 October, 2016
Forest on a Comet brings together two artists and two attitudes to the notion of space, home and mobility. Trees and a comet. Mapping the space with photographs in different forms and contexts. Comet represents dynamics and movement but also a threat of destabilization, the unknown, distant, intangible.
For Katarzyna Wąsowska home is a feeling, a relation, a phenomenon that we carry with us during our constant migrations. Journey has always been a key notion in Wasowska's works. Mobility is in her genes. Men in her family have always been sailors. Trees, on the other hand, represent stabilization, comfort, safety; a place. Trees experience time and space in a unique way.
Magdalena Andrynowska analyzes, organizes and re-organizes the space nearest to her. She focuses on trees as bearers of past and future, unique links with nature and culture.
Formally the exhibition will be a dialogue between traditional large format camera photographs, photographs forming narratives in books, experiments with organic images made of tree extracts, mental and graphic maps, projections, installations.
Anna Kędziora, visual artist, curator and teacher in the Photography Department at the University of Arts in Poznan, Poland. Co-manager of an international photography competition Poznan Photo Diploma Award. Co-curator of photography and video exhibitions (among others: during the 9th Photography Biennale in Poznan 2015 and TIFF festival in Wroclaw 2016). Presented her works in several individual and group exhibitions and conferences in Poland, Germany, Spain, Greece, Wales, Sweden, Belarus, Lithuania and Slovakia.
Katarzyna Wąsowska – born in 1990 in Gdańsk. Currently a student of Photography, at the University of Arts in Poznań. One of founders of a young and independent publishing house-Ostrøv in Poznań. She took part in several photography competitions and exhibitions in Europe, among others:
Encontros da Imagem Festival, Braga, Portugal / shortlisted, TIFF festival, Wrocław / laureate of debut section, Poznań Photo Diploma Award, Poznań / nominated.
Magdalena Andrynowska – born in 1982. Studied Medical Physics (2001-2006) at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. MA graduate of Photography at the University of Arts in Poznan (2016). Her interdisciplinary works are based in photography, installations and video. Participated in group exhibitions: Diploma Works of the University of Arts 2014, Poznan; The non-obvious 2014, Poznan; Local Temperature 2016, Szczecin, Local Pressure2016 Poznan; Diploma Works of the University of Arts 2016 Poznan; Territorium Novum 2016 Wroclaw. Lives and works in Poznan.
As a part of European Month of Photography Berlin
A Diverging Frontier (Russia and its Neighbors)
A Diverging Frontier (Russia and its Neighbors)
Artist: Justyna Mielnikiewicz
Opening: 30.09.2016, 7 pm
Guided tour: 01.10.2016, 6 pm
Exhibition dates: 27.09. – 14.10.2016
A Diverging Frontier (Russia and its Neighbors) combines two long-term projects realised over the past decade, presenting an in-depth look at the Caucasus and Ukraine – two former regions of the Soviet Union that have struggled to break away from Russia's sphere of influence toward Western Europe for the last 25 years. Justyna Mielnikiewicz's work brings a closer perspective to the changes that continue to take place there through the broad context of geopolitical location, often conflicting interpretations of the recent history, and by way of the commitment and personal stories of the people the artist talked to and photographed there. December 26, 2016 will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union, when fifteen independent countries replaced the Union Republics. The project explores borders as ever-changing spheres of influence that overlap physical boundaries marked on a map. It documents life on the European frontier and delves into symbolic meanings and reconstructed historical narratives of these borderlands, which contribute to forming national identity and shaping the images of the neighbouring countries.
Justyna Mielnikiewicz is award winning photographer from Poland. Since 2003 based in the Republic of Georgia. Her work mainly focuses on the countries of the former Soviet Union. Her photographs have been published in various international publications such as The New York Times, Monocle, Newsweek International, Marie Claire, GEO France, National Geographic, Le Monde, Stern, German Yearbook of Reporters without Borders – among others. She began her career in 1999 in Poland, reporting for the daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza. Since 2001 she works as a freelance documentary photographer . Most important part of her professional activities is devoted to personal , long term projects. In 2014 she published her first book: " Woman with a Monkey- Caucasus in Short Notes and Photographs, which covers a photographer's decade of documenting Caucasus.
The exhibition has been prepared as a part of European Month of Photography
We are very happy to be a partner of an event:
Event with an art project by Dörte Manzke
15.09.2016, 5 pm
Box66 Interkulturelles Begegnungszentrum für Frauen und Familien am Ostkreuz,
Sonntagstr.9, 10245 Berlin
Group show
Curator: Krzysztof Urban
Opening: 26.08.2016, 7 pm
Exhibition dates: 26.08- 20.09.2016
AK30 has been founded as a collective project of the Studio of Theatre Phenomena at the University of Arts in Poznan, Poland and its professors, students and friends. The idea came from Krzysztof Urban and prof. Piotr Tetlak took over artistic supervision on this project. 30 exhibitions in 30 days- AK30 project allows the viewers a direct contact with various artists from Poznan cultural scene. The project started in 2009 and this year, 2016, it took place from the 1st to the 30th of March. During AK30 each opening lasts only one evening and it changes into an ephemeral event. Through the different spaces, in which it is organized, it gains also a very unique, almost intimate character. An artist or the artists connected to a particular space, f.i. an apartment or a studio, try to show with help of its special set- up a character of their artistic practice. Then the guests could see not only the ready art works, but also get know better sources of artistic inspirations, such as: books, CDs or many other objects, which influenced the artists.
During the exhibition at UP Project Space in Berlin the summary of AK30 and its most significant projects will be presented.
Studio of Theatre Phenomena
Head: Assoc. Prof. PhD hab. Piotr Tetlak
Assistant: Martyna Stachowczyk
Laboratory assistant: Krzysztof Urban
The didactic programme of the Studio is realized through corrections, plain-aires, workshops and participation in cultural events in Poznan, such as performances, installation realizations, performative activities. The Studio is vested with technical and laboratory background, useful for various tasks and working outdoors. Plain-aires at the Studio are conducted in the cooperative theatres and other such places in Poland. After BA graduation the students have gained theoretical and practical knowledge of design, concerning spectacular forms both in open and enclosed non- theatrical spaces, and the skill of cooperation within other domains of art. During MA studies the students develop additional design and artistic skills, like cooperation with a director, where the final effect may be a stage design or an artistic expression, e.g. performance. The Studio suggests analysis and synthesis in stage design and design of space at the theatre, in open-air shows and events. We create through experiments, research of matter and of the space we are using. We practise the search for inspiration, supplementing knowledge through specialist literature on theatre, technological solutions, special effects, and multimedia, as well as philosophical and psychological literature. Apart from the didactic-design programme the Studio arranges a 'field programme', which realizes designs for festivals, associations, foundations and also theatres.
Ambiguous. Between form and medium
Ambiguous. Between form and medium
Artist: Michał Filipiak
Opening: 22.07.2016, 7 p.m.
22.07 – 20.08.2016
Ambiguous. Between form and medium is a collection of luminous objects being exploration in the range of form and function. Balance between those two key aspects of industrial design becomes a space of inspiration and activity. Products of creative research become animated in the form of spatial objects which through its form and used material enable friendly coexistence with other products in the nearest environment. The scale of the objects enable the user intimacy whilst being close to the form. Light however becomes a complement to the shape, its emphasis, sometimes its initial shape becomes blurred bringing out new values. Relation of light and shadow in conjunction with the material is that ambiguity – peculiar game between form and light. Yonder game is played by the user who being in touch with the object gets to know it, through experimenting brings out another previously unknown appropriable levels.
Michał Filipiak born in 1977 in Poznan, Poland. Graduated from Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan in the field of Industrial Design. Head of Interdisciplinary Design Studio on Architecture and Design Faculty, University of Arts in Poznań. In his artistic research related with the product seeks relations between material and light designing appropriable objects and light structures. He also deals with graphic design, interior design and exhibition design. Website
Group show
24. 06 – 15-07.2016
UP Project Space is honored to participate in this year's edition of the "48 Stunden Neukölln" festival, which takes place from June 24th to 26th, 2016.
By using the theme of the festival – "Satt" (English: "lush") we transform space in and around the UP Project Space into a temporary art venue. It will be dedicated to an international presentation by the artists from Germany, Poland, Ukraine or Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The "Satt"/ "Lush" theme includes works made in different medias, such as performance, photography, video art and sculptural objects. There is a strong focus put on the interdisciplinary character and also on interaction with inhabitants from the neighborhood. We would like to take our festival guests into a journey through a fictional land of eternal happiness and plenty, where the abundance is possible – in the Land of Cockaigne.
"Cockaigne" is a synonymy for "sweetness of doing nothing" paradise. But in the medieval times it was also projected as fears of hunger and death. Although today's Western is full of possibilities, we fight against very advanced solitude. In the glut of inputs we have no time for a conscious perception. We eliminate a simple need of self-definition and slowly disappear in unreal fictional creation of our own personality. The reality awakes new phobias, stereotypes and fears, which are resulted by the glut. But what is actually missing, is a direct contact with another person. During the "Cockaigne" (Richardstr. 43/44 and its surrounding) this search for a personal contact changes into a social manifest.
Participating artists: Janusz Bałdyga, Mykhaylo Barabash, Monika Kakolewska, Berenika Pyza, Przemek Przepióra, Marta Bosowska, Angelika Grzegorczyk, Urszula Kluz-Knopek, Olga Mikhailyuk, , Vitalii Shupliak, Taras Pastushuk, Szymon Kula, Urszula Lucińska, Michał Knychaus, Karolina Wojciechowska, Marcin Zaręba, Kornel Ofierski, Grzegorz Myćka, Mladen Miljanović, Joachim Seinfeld.
Opening hours during the "48 Stunden Neukölln" festival:
Friday, June 24th, 7 pm – 11 pm
Saturday, June 25th, 3 pm – 7 pm
Sunday, June 26th, 3 pm – 7 pm
Video documentation made by Mishka Studio: please click here
Photo credits: Urszula Kluz – Knopek
TRANSFUSION. Who is the first to throw a stone?
Artist: Paweł Nowak
Opening: 4.06.2016, 7 pm
4.06 – 17.06.2016
Modest Art by Magdalena Sołtys
Paweł Nowak is a modest artist, whose achievements are interesting and quite considerable. Since the 1990s, he has been associated with representations, objects, installations, which have one thing in common – the use of wax. Since that time, moreover, this has been Nowak's hallmark, shorthand that becomes activated on hearing his name. This material does not dominate in his art today though, rather interacting with his other techniques or being part of his original techniques. Years ago, Nowak's works invited the audience not only to watch but also sniff or touch, with meaning having a wide-ranging sensual impact. Even then, he was interested in the human existence, physicality and spirituality, transience, mysticism and metaphysics (and that has not changed), but he actually used the language of abstraction. In recent years, this work has been redirected or extended to include classically formatted painting and drawing. There were just paintings – both small formats on paper and quite large canvases – which completed the videos, photographs, objects and interventions in the exhibition space. Before, the object or installation used to be one piece integrating a number of elements, a homogeneous concept, now the installation is a collection, compilation, configuration of works in a variety of techniques, communicated to achieve a narrative; the exhibition as a whole is an installation. In Nowak's art today, we shall find expressive abstraction, figuration, portrait and realistic inclinations. And when asked about what is important in his art, he responds: the emotions, instincts, life reflexes. I'm interested in the fact that we are human. Only a personal relationship with another human being.
What are Nowak's installations/exhibitions shown in recent years specifically composed of? How does he develop artistically what he decided to make the problem of his art?
He offers the viewer, among other things, glass hearts that are pure form, reflected from reality, the knowledge of anatomy. The form arrived at using material that is fragile, transparent, and originally liquid; a potential formlessness. Nowak's glass hearts are dehumanized, dissected, laboratory. There is emptiness in them; they do not beat, do not live. Stuck on metal rods, situated at a natural height, or in multiplicity, extremely objectified – materialized through glass to oblivion, they are placed on a metal structure (Duchampean) for drying bottles, which regulates, organizes, their spatial relations. They remain in a peculiar elation, exaltation, in a merciless, categorical, conclusive exhibition or demonstration. They are all separate – next to each other, and only besides. Not for themselves. These hearts are elements of formal game, sinister, though handsome, decor. They speak clearly about human coexistence in the modern world. As if expressing a diagnosis – people dwell in systems deprived of relationships, anonymous, bondless, without commitment, without love, separate but configured or separate and somehow summed up. Emotionally transparent for themselves. Equipped with a raw mentality. And all that could be smashed in an instant. Only the supporting elements will remain then, the positioning structure, the frames – giving the illusion of existence. They are more durable than life. They are filled by successive anonymous transparent participants of the dynamic and cynical life. Yes, Nowak uses sterile forms in order to express something.
In a special way, he also tries to touch matter – matter of life and its materiality. Large abstract paintings are filled with red or reddish soft, fleshy, almost spatial stain-shapes – rounded smears, blisters. They seem to be very carnal, like the tissue structure of the internal organs, some distant inflorescences. On other occasions, Nowak places sculptural representations of hearts and brains in glass cases, moving in the direction of recreation, suggestive concretization of matter. On the other hand, we see simplified human figures in the drawings – nudes, half nudes, often just hearts and brains (at the level of meaning – emotional and mental) and tissue (the purely biological). Physiological traces. Here, life is vibrant, matter reveals its painterly, aesthetic disposition: dripping, smearing, staining, and dirtying in an abstract fashion. Nowak subjects those images to destruction; he makes them look stranger with a scrawl, pushing them towards dramatic chaos. He does not escape from readability, either – the red stain is first of all a stain of blood. The blood is not blood of extreme events; it is not the blood of history, martyrdom, rather the blood of everyday life, becoming a metaphor for ordinariness. You will not find inflated symbolizations of red – it is certainly expressive, but it is not trivial, monotonous, often being off, tired, "overworked", "lived"… Colours on the whole are naturalistic, referring to human flesh, intimacy.
Moreover, surrounded by the spots on paper, there appear portraits, including those of his beloved wife, on which, along with the background, sloppy patches of crimson are intentionally placed again. The portraits are abbreviated records of different physiognomies, which are linked by corporeality – by scarlet. We are, after all, of the same tissue, we share the same physicality – universal. We are a community of species. But Nowak quickly departs from what is purely physical and moving towards the oppressive role of culture, the callousness of civilization. His portraits are supplemented with Social Security numbers (the "abstract" paintings, too). This highlights the objectification of the individual, who is identified and verified through a sequence of digits. Individual men and women do not mean anything more than they add to bureaucratic records, statistics. In his text "Morphology of feelings" of 2012, Sławomir Marzec rightly stressed: the impersonality of our biology and statistical impersonality represented by Social Security numbers. Impersonality of the internal and external identifications, whose merging does not necessarily amount to our presence.
Identity, the real one, is therefore neither biological nor statistical. It is constituted by the experience of inner circle. In his works, Nowak shows the faces of his wife, children, family and friends. He recognizes himself in them – being defined by them. This art is almost a naive praise of the world unmediated, unprocessed, not imprinted from the simulacrum, without interferences, that is, a world personally experienced, direct, tangible, comprehensible, to be circumvented, crossed and lived. There is a note of romantic traditionalism there, but this art is made to keep up with the times – it identifies with the moment in time through the use of particular artistic means; this is its point of reference and the subject of poetic polemics. And not only to point out the oppressive role of contemporary society, but also to contrast this aspect of human life with what is, what could be man's salvation. It is precisely about the happiness, which seems to be a dream, desire, utopia, and quixotic pursuit in Nowak's art. The semantic weight of the glass hearts seemingly denies it, but juxtaposed with Nowak's own case, happiness becomes a reality, something ordinary – reclaimed from utopia. The artist sends visual signals with ethical and emotional overtones, as if proclaiming that the social norm rests on healthy relationship, happiness depending on a special closeness between people. The mood is dramaturgical, expressive; sensual impressions are exerted. Nowak seems to be expecting a response to the signals from the viewer, the signals belonging to the animal nature of man, being an essential element of our system of communication. He wishes to make the symbolic and semiotic meaning of his representations equal to reaction to the signals that these representations induce. The experience of the world after all lies in the body, in the senses – these emotions, life's reflexes, instincts, including sex, which Nowak is talking about. Some messages first need to be addressed to the senses, and that is what he does.
Since one does not have to look far in life, transcendence is also in us; it is internalized. These glass hearts are sacred vessels for the consecrated life. But is it really consecrated? Perhaps just – life. Religious contexts and Christian overtones are often attributed to Nowak's art. But he seems not to be declaring his faith; unless it is enough that he believes in love and closeness. This "faith" is both secular and sacred. I suspect that he does not need to be religious, and needs to be socialized, to love and be loved. So, in his narrative, he constantly moves from sad society to joyful socialization.
Nowak's work is a multifaceted narrative – a collection of perspectives on the same thing, which is being among people. His art is both cruelly exposing and truly affirmative. Slightly barbaric in its means, and poetic, romantic, idealistic and straightforward in the final expression. Nowak would order transfusions of feelings, mental transfusions, so that people realized what was important in life – becoming open to others. (Which he does even in exhibitions titled "Transfusion".)
[translated by Piotr Szymor]
Paweł Nowak– born in 1965, Professor of Fine Arts. He studied at the Faculty of Graphic Arts, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, 1985-90; since 1989, has been working at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Faculty of Graphic Arts, where he now runs a studio of painting. Also, since 2005, he has run a studio of drawing at Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology. His art practice incorporates painting, drawing, installation art and multimedia.
Selected solo shows: 1990 – Dziekanka Gallery, Warsaw; 1993 – Galllery in Alten Rathaus, Musberk; 1995 – Biała Gallery, Lublin; 1999 – Kunst Biuro, Berlin; 2000 – Sculpture Gallery, Warsaw; Obrist Gallery, Essen; Studio Gallery, Warsaw; 2002 – Koło Gallery, Gdańsk; 2003 – r. Gallery, Poznań; 2004 – XX1 Gallery, Warsaw; City Gallery, Gustrow; 2009 – XX1 Gallery, Warsaw; 2013 – Biała Gallery, Lublin; 2014 – Promocyjna Gallery, Warsaw; 2015 – Nieformalna Gallery, Warsaw; Patricia&Philip Frost Art Museum, FIU, Miami.
Selected group shows: 1990 – Visum, Quarkhaus, Berlin; 1994 – Centre of Polish Sculpture, Orońsko;1996 – BWA Gallery, Cracow; 1997 – Szósta Linia Gallery, Minsk; 1998 – The Art Museum, Vitebsk; Bojer Art Centre, St. Petersburg; "6+6", Amfilada Gallery, Szczecin; 2004 – National Museum in Szczecin; 2008 – Centre of Prints and Drawings in Kalisz; 2010 – Bergen National Academy of Fine Arts Gallery, Bergen; 2011 – EL Gallery, Elbląg.
He has participated in 15 symposia and art workshops, including: 1990 –VISUM Symposium, Reszel; 1991 – Consecuencias Symposium, Bejar, Spain; 1996 – "The Object of Art", art workshops, Sandomierz, organized by BWA Gallery, Sandomierz; 1997 – "Kunst lehren?", Symposium, Wolfenbuttel, organized by IGBK, Bonn; 1997 – "Neue Kunst fur alte Kirchen", art workshops, Gros Kisow, organized by Kunst Biuro, Berlin; 1999 – "The expanding space", art workshops, Orońsko, organized by Centre of Polish Sculpture, Orońsko.
Recent awards: EXIT Prize (2013), Cyprian Kamil Norwid Prize (2015)
Illogical Game
Illogical Game
Artist: Rafał Górczyński
Opening: 20.05.2016, from 7 pm
13. – 28.05.2016
Illogical Game – a composite installation depicting correct failures. An error factor appears, which is commonly regarded as improper action, noncompliant with the generally adopted standards, one with bad consequences. What decides about an error? Is it the human being, by determining norms and principles? How about "errors" in nature? At present we pursue perfection. This is a so-called zero error culture, with no imperfection, one which finds it hard to accept deviations from the norm. The human being has made an entire series of mistakes which are supposed to order everyday reality in our hierarchy. Is, however, perfection an absence of mistakes, or rather can an error contribute to perfection. The work depicts all kinds of sensory experience; it is the viewer who decides if the error is a disadvantage or if it contributes to a new reality, making the obvious less real.
Pictoplasma Festival: Niels Kalk and Amelie Fléchais
UP Project Space is very happy to be part of this years edition of Pictoplasma Festival. We are going to show works of two very talented artists: Niels Kalk and Amelie Flechais.
Opening: Wednesday 4th of May at 18:00
Exhibition continues until the May 8th, 2016.
Opening times 12:00 – 20:00
Spring 2016 Pictoplasma transforms Berlin into the world's most exciting meeting point for a diverse scene of international artists and creatives, trailblazing the face of tomorrow's visual culture. The festival showcases latest trends in figurative character design, from fine to urban arts, illustration, animation and graphic design. Creators, producers and fans meet for an unconventional conference with cutting-edge artist presentations, curated screening programmes bring the latest animation eye-candy to the big screen, and a series of exhibitions and group-shows invite visitors to experience original works and outstanding character craftsmanship.
After working in digital design and illustration for a decade, Niels Kalk rediscovered the very sticky medium of good ol' collage, whose world he is currently exploding. Alongside a selection of his more surreal explorations, Niels will show new pieces that provide a peek into his creative process.
Amelie Fléchais is a children's book illustrator and visual development artist. Inspired by Japanese and European folklore, she creates a mystical watercolour world full of fearless kids, outlandish vegetable beings, fearsome ogres and freaky little ghosts. Welcome to the wood!
More about Pictoplasma Festival
Walser by Zbigniew Libera
Artist: Zbigniew Libera
26.04.2016, 7 pm
As a part of FilmPOLSKA Festival
Poland, 2015, 78 min.
Directed by Zbigniew Libera, Screenplay by Grzegorz Jankowicz / Zbigniew Libera, Director of photography: Adam Sikora, Starring: Krzysztof Stroiński, Andrzej Walser, Gustaw Klyszcz, Joanna Wiktorczyk, Andrzej Borowski, Dagny Borowska, Gaja Borowska, Katarzyna Dobrowolska
Conteheli is a tribe that lives at the outskirts of the civilisation. They have blue eyes, fancifully pinned up flaxen dreads and pattern painted faces. They look like achievement of hippie's dream of return to nature or a slavic version of avatar. They play on a sort of ethno-futuristic instruments, which connect them to the cosmos and the primordial visions of unity of man and nature. Beautiful, young and immortal, they run wildly, ornamented with jewellery made of straws and fruits, until one day they are paid a visit by an outsider, a railway clerk Walser. Despite him trying desperately to adapt to this idyllic world and learn the incomprehensible language, he creates chaos. Stylised world of Walser flirts with tradition of the genre cinema: post-apocalyptic, science-fiction, western or cavemen films. However primitivism and "glamour" do not contradict each other here. Libera is using cliches known from genre cinema such as literary figures of lost paradise, philosophical and counter-cultural concepts of utopian community, or phantasms about the end of the civilisation,
as building blocks to erect a multi-storey puzzle.
Łukasz Ronduda and Jakub Marmurek – the authors of Cinema-Art – in their research on the field of mutual infiltration of film medium and visual art, pointed to 2015 as a breakthrough year for cinematographic turn in polish visual art, that is a transformation of visual artists into feature film directors. 2015 is also a year of premiere of "Walser" by Zbigniew Libera ( the first winner of Film Award founded by PISF and MSN for artists from "media's border"), "Performer" by Łukasz Ronduda and Maciej Sobieszczański and "Photon" by Norman Leto. It is not accidental that two of the premiers took place during that year's New Horizons festival; An event directed by Roman Gutek which from its beginnings created a foundation of polish art-house by promoting and developing this specific branch of cinema-culture. The two features by Sasnals( "Huba" and " From afar the view is beautiful") shown here at the last two editions of the festival,were – according to Ronduda and Majmurek- one of the first polish films, which referred to "New horizon" cinema: growing legacy of european modernism, rejecting projection-identification model, de-dramatised, confronting the viewer with emptiness, boredom and motionlessness. Zbigniew Libera's "Walser" seems to smoothly inscribe itself into this "New Horizon", neomodernist trend in polish cinema; trend which opens up Polish cinema onto european art-house and specificity of festival audience.
Visual artists feature film debuts are always very interesting and exciting. Expectations grow together with artists gallery successes, and feature outline of art still seems something new and fresh; especially in Poland. Libera's "Walser" is a story, which is suspended in time and space and speaks about a clash of two distant worlds. The tribe living is the wild is paid an unexpected visit by clerk Walser, who embodies contemporary civilisations of speed and technology. The man, wearing a half torn suit, has to make a connection with half naked natives; and this will determine his survival. Learning a foreign language, constant attempts to understand mysterious rituals and radically different lifestyle provoke countercultural dialog, but also lead to countercultural conflict. Post-apocaliptic vision of civilisational collapse, gives birth to the reflection about the role of communication, connection between habits and mentality, acceptance of the other and the art of adapting to other culture. Primordial world with its tribal rituals, unconditional affirmation of nature, harmony of the universe in music and community, the superior role of instinct and the collapse of contemporary morality is a mysterious and incomprehensible universe for contemporary man; and together with Walser the viewer is guided here to the edge of insanity and despair. Libera takes us to the the edge of the foreign world, leaving us there as we were a group of amateur anthropologists, and shadowing Bronisław Malinowski, he forces us to take a closer look at things that are escaping our "western" worldview. Malinowski claimed, that in order to penetrate foreign customs, one needs to look at the reality through the eyes of the native- to know its language and habits, abandon ones own, become an integral part of the community. Counter-cultural conflict in Libera's film is born out of the inability to penetrate the other world; here, the viewer , just like the main character, is unable to tear off its suit, and it will remain western and contemporary, just as wild will remain wild.
In the last decades, one could observe a trend to describe the changes in the field of human sciences with the term "turn"; it has become the main organisational category in the humanistic research, as well as reflection upon it. Whenever we talk about cinematographic turn in polish contemporary culture, we can also see an anthropological turn, however often treated with a pinch of salt- the return in cinema to the human itself, its subjectivity and body. This turn is described in the context of neomodernist cinema, by a film critic Rafał Syska: Characteristic of a neomodernism form of staging does not pulls off (…) [however] from the genuine human, on the contrary: it allows a much more intensive process of identification, but it takes place without the help of tools used for building an emotional connection with the character. In consequence, we are faced with a neomodern paradox – a distance that in fact makes the human being closer. It is also this paradox that neomodernist topics are based on, they not only tell the story, but also organise an alternative model of communication between the viewer and the film medium. […] Neomodernism comprises less of a activity and doing and more on being and experiencing, which enables inevitable anthropological turn.
This Turn, as in Sasnal's "Huba", is intensified in "Walser". The human being, its instinct and cultural identity are foregrounded. The camera is tracing bodies and nature, combining both planes in one image. "Walser" analogically to" Huba" inscribes itself into neomodern movement, however it uses a much more complex set of tools, avoiding radical minimalism and asceticism. The dramaturgy grows with every scene, anxiety and misunderstanding are increasing in chaotic development of events. You really want to say: its neomodernism, but in completely different form, so new and interesting.
Delict in Absence
Delict in Absence
Artist: Mladen Miljanović
Opening:15.04.2016, 7 pm
15.04 – 28.04.2016
Delict in Absence is a project and concept of investigational works examining social, cultural, political and living conditions-potentials in one mid Bosnian village (Osjecani). This investigation is embodied in series of photography's, videos, drawings and simulations. Title of the project refers to importance of that what is absent, more than what is visible and in presence. The project consists of works such as "I couldn't miss" which is a video recorded with the most talented basketball player from 80s (now war veteran). For this video the basketball player comes back to the court to test his talent after 30 years break. In another work "Big picture of detail" which is a series of photographs showing a formal details of specific places. When we discover the context of the photos, the meaning changes. In another work "Strategy and simulation" the artist collected people stories and situations from village and applied and formalized them through simulated ambitious military plan. Main goal in this process of social archeological approach is not only to depict and represent actual situation, but also to offer an utopist idea of future transformation and self-progress.
Mladen Miljanović born in Zenica – Bosnia and Herzegowina in 1981, completed the secondary school in Doboj. After the secondary school I attended the Reserve Officer School where I earned the rank of sergeant. As a sergeant I trained 30 privates. After completion of the military term I enrolled at the Academy of Arts (Department of Painting) in Banja Luka. Major solo projects and exhibitions include "The Garden of Delights" at 55th Venice biennale, Venice;" At the Edge", ACB Gallery, Budapest; "Good Night-State of Body" A+A Gallery, Venice; "Museum Service" MUMOK – Wien; "Holiday of Discomfort" Antje Wachs Gallery Berlin; "Good Night-State of Body" MC Gallery, New York; "Ocupational Theraphy" Museum of Contemporary Arts RS, Banja Luka, and some others. I based my art work upon my own life experience: on one hand it is the experience of growing up during the war and after war in the destroyed, impoverished, ethnically and territorially divided, and externally isolated country; on the other hand it is my formal education (at one stage of my education I attended the Reserve Officers School). The consequences of the war and knowledge gained in the military school make the basic field of reference of my work as an artist. Considering my entire engagement, strategy and work methods, it can be concluded that for me the art is not a goal but the means of confrontation with the negative present/past and possibility of new reality creation. I'm identifying my position of an artist as community service. I use art as the means of sublimation of the negative forms of the present and past, taking performance, installation, image, photograph as media through which the forms of the social trauma are being redefined. Website
Artist: Julia Popławska
Opening: 31.03.2016, 8 pm
1 – 11.04.2016
The show consists of two video-works by Julia Popławska. Both video projects deal with social problems. The exhibition begins with a triptych video called Scamper-Progress-Urge (from 2015), which attempts to analyze Polish society. Progress shows a young person smoking a cigarette and reciting a prayer of a Jasnogórski appeal. The words express a hope in young generation. Both, smoking and praying learned by heart, are habits, repeated without hesitation, and both seem to come from unconscious mind. The last part of the triptych Urge, shows a Polish-German couple kissing on a bench. This romantic activity happens next to the national monument. Urge shows a new attitude of some of young Germans and Poles, who seek to reconcile through forgiveness and oblivion. They want to be free from historical disputes, which still exist between the two nations. The second film Diagnosis (from 2015), is composed of three scenes recorded in one shot. It is an attempt to visualize dreams and emotional state of a person diagnosed with cancer. The first scene shows anxiety before diagnosis. The next shot shows a mental state after diagnosis. The last scene shows a feeling of lost reality.
Julia Popławska (b. 1991, PL) – is studying Intermedia in the Multimedia Communication department of University of Arts in Poznań in Poland. Her movie If you really want something (2013) presented at the ARTBOOM Festival in Cracow, at the main exhibition The face of Day. Social Costs in Poland after 1989, curated by Stanisław Ruksza. The film also accompanied debates organized by: MS in Łódź, Municipal Gallery Arsenał in Poznań, Political Critique in Warsaw, Anarchistic Club Zemsta in Poznań. In 2015 the artist performed at the 15th edition of Interakcje Festival in Piotrków Trybunalski.
All May Come But Doesn't Have To Go
All May Come But Doesn't Have To Go
Group show
Opening: 9.03.2016, 8 pm
10 – 19.03.2016
Artists: Grzegorz Bibro, Klaas Hübner, Ewa Kubiak, Piotr Macha, Alessandro Rauschmann, SerpentHolderddk (Michał Dudek)
Grzegorz Bibro, born 1978, works with photography, objects and video which are often performative. He works with his own body, using it as a tool and main subject of his artistic activity. His second area of interest is faith as well as the relation between religion and body. He graduated from Multimedia Faculty at the Academy Of Fine Arts in Poznan (MA). He works and exhibits in Poland and Germany.
Klaas Hübner, born 1979, works with installation, performance, music, instruments, theater and dance.
10-11 Meisterschüler of Else Gabriel, School of Arts Berlin-Weissensee
05-10 Diploma Studies of Sculpture, School of Arts Berlin-Weissensee
03-04 Studies of Agricultural Science, Humboldt University, Berlin
Ewa Kubiak, born 1986 in Poznan, graduated from the Academy of Fine Art (Art Criticism) and University of Arts in Poznan (Painting). Currently she is working on a PhD at her native university. She works with mixed media.
Piotr Macha, born in 80's in Sosnowiec. From 2013 he is a PhD student at the Faculty of Multimedia
Communication, University of Arts, Poznan, from 2012 is is an assistant at Piotr C.Kowalski Painting Studio at the University of Arts in Poznan. 2010 he got a MA in Fine Art, Painting at the University of Arts in Poznan. He works with various media: installation, video, performance, sound, photography.
Alessandro Rauschmann *1985, Europe, Performance/ Artefact/ Photography, he is living and working.
SerpentHolderddk (Michał Dudek) born 1979 in Warsaw, graduated at Grzegorz Kowalski's Audiovisual Space Studio in the Faculty of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 2005. Since his DAAD scholarship in 2006-07 at the University of Fine Arts – Berlin in Rebecca Horn Studio he has been living and working in Berlin. The starting point of his art was experiencing his own body and mental journeys, finding "the other in himself". This has led him to work with synthesis of the developing process of the human body and mind in the environment that surrounds us. Michal Dudek works with classic medias, drawing, sculpture as well as creating interactive multimedia installations and audiovisual performances.
Artists: Marcin Berdyszak, Patrik Kovacovsky
Opening: 22.01.2016,7 pm.
22.01.– 20.02.2016
The Real-Fiction show gathers work by Marcin Berdyszak and Patrik Kovacovsky made specifically for the exhibition, to be displayed in Berlin for the first time. They reflect on the most recent events connected with terrorist attacks, which most often target people uninvolved in and dissociated from any social, political or religious conflict. The work will facilitate reflection on the idea of a united Europe and on a joint solution to the hard problems of today and will moreover suggest redefinitions of some terms.
Real-Fiction launches a series of projects to be held in 2016 at the UP Project Space under the motto Neighbours/Sąsiedztwo. The exhibition gains special significance in the context of present-day socio-political situation and international cooperation and addresses questions related to the security and status of the individual.
Marcin Berdyszak Born in Poznań in 1964, in 1988 received a diploma in Painting in Prof. Włodzimierz Dudkowiak's studio and in Sculpture in Prof. Maciej Szańkowski's one at the Poznań State School of Fine Arts. Since 1989 connected with the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, now University of Arts in Poznań.
Active in the fields of installation, object, multimedia, and drawing. He has shown his work at numerous solo and collective exhibitions, e.g. in Poland, Germany, Slovakia, Finland, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Mexico, United Kingdom, Lithuania, USA, Israel, Czech Republic, and Japan. His work can be found in Polish and foreign collections. He has taken part in countless seminars and conferences on art education. He has conducted a few dozen workshops in Poland and abroad.
Patrik Kovacovsky lives and works in Bratislava. After studying sculpture (Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava) and multimedia / film (AC – California, USA) he works currently as a pedagogue at the Academy (since 2007, head of studio "Sculpture in Public space and Architecture" at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava Slovakia). He has exhibited at prestigious shows, for instance accompanying event/show of the documenta X in Kassel (1997), 48. Biennale di Venezia : Pavilion of Slovak Republic (1999), EXPO 2000 Hannover (Germany), Multimedia and Film Biennial 2000 in Paris and DC Open (2011 ) in Düsseldorf/Cologne or 15th Tallinn Print Triennial, at KUMU Art Museum (2011). He applies himself to experimental film, photography, installation, painting, printing and sculpture.
Stories From The End
Stories From The End
Group show
Opening: 27.11.2015, 7 pm
27.11.2015 – 12.01.2016
UP Gallery is proud to present Stories From The End a group show of the Lensbased class of Hito Steyerl.
With: Antonia Cattan, Josh Crowle, Alice Dalgalarrondo, Domenico Distilo, Charlotte Eifler, Elektra KB, Adrian Gutzelnig, Georgina Hill, Paida Larsen, Anna Kędziora, Aurelio Kopainig, Barbara Marcel, Julia Mensch, Maximillian Schmoetzer, Bruno Siegrist, Dan Ward, Nina Wiesnagrotzki, Till Wittwer.
curated by Kamil Markiewicz
be it lie or be it truth
let the earth open up
and close again
whoever's listening
will tell it again
– popular storytelling refrain from the riverine regions of the southern pacific.
Capitalist expansion, imperial violence, mass displacements, global warming, surveillance, infotainment, genetic manipulation, and more capitalism. Such is the maelstrom of news stories we are immersed in daily in increasingly accelerating times. Information is supposed to help us make sense of these unfolding events and democracy is meant to help us contest the forces that shape our lives. But increasingly both of these outlets are being put into question, leaving us stranded and confused online or on the streets. We seek refuge in friendships, work, the advancement of our personal careers, romance and self-enhancing (de)vices. Some of these intensify the links that connect us, others just leave us deserted and isolated. We are exhausted, yet we continue to try to understand.
The violence of the present moment is only modulated by its complex and confused form. To speak, to show, to tell, to intervene and to participate, in this context, are risky gestures, always haunted by the spectre of failure. The show in UP Gallery, brings together several works by young artists that do not shy away from taking on the present conjuncture in its violent and confused entirety. Using different approaches and modes of inquiry (personal experience, research, activism, found footage and digital imagery), and travelling vast distances from mountains to sea, space to earth, from the material to the ethereal, the works remain nonetheless grounded in a plane of immediacy, connected to specific people, landscapes, objects and histories. A theme we find ourselves returning to again and again is colonialism, perhaps less as a concrete historic event than as an ongoing process of displacement and destruction, but also make-belief and inscription, that modernity requires.
With the crisis of capital, climate and democratic legitimation comes the crisis of knowledge. The overabundance of image-information finds its double in the confusion of meaning. How to make sense of what one sees? How to spot the difference between truth and fiction, science and religion? Do we need a script to tell coherent stories? How does the internet change the way we tell stories?
Stories told by the artists:
Till Wittwer, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Invisible Hand, lecture performance, 2015
In an early scene of Luc Besson's science-fiction movie "The Fifth Element" there is not much left of Leeloo, the film's central character. But on the base of a few living cells in her hand – the only part of her body that did not get completely vaporized in an alien attack – she can be reconstructed and with this reconstruction the film's plot can unfold.
In order to make sense of the world it helps to have a visual layer: If we have a hand, we can develop a narrative. If this hand is missing, there is no more coherent – and cohesive – narrative. Today, we find ourselves in a world in which we are troubled to develop coherent narratives of ourselves: The world is moving around us at high speed and has us struggling to keep our limbs screwed to our torsos and more often than not, we fail.
Where did our hands go when they became invisible? Does invisible really mean "not to be seen anymore"? What is the visual representation of the invisible in the eyes of an all-controlling search engine? Can a screen be a trap?
Domenico Distilo, The Calm and the Storm, HD video, 2009
As a filmmaker I face censorship and propaganda. They are closely linked phenomena and major themes in the field of cinema and art, since the power of storytelling is recognised as having strategic importance in national policies.
The Calm and the Storm tells the backstage of the production of a three-minute-clip commissioned in 2009 by the Italian national channel RAI 1: a short film portrait of a red cross nurse who rescued refugees in Lampedusa. But as it turned out in the production process, the film had to contain a political message: the refugees problem in Lampedusa had been solved by the government. In the form of a pamphlet, The calm and the storm is the reflection on that period of censorship in Italy.
Josh Crowle,Jack & Debbie, HD video, 2014
Jack & Debbie traces narrative lines between Debbie Harry becoming digitized by Andy Warhol on July 23rd 1985 and Jack a video game character becoming materialized in paper on August 16th 2013. Assumptions about what lies through and beyond the screen are challenged, whilst characters are violently re-mediated into displays, processors and paper models.
Dan Ward, Performance, HD video, 2015
A single day spent in a motion capture studio documenting two actors, a director and technicians working to calibrate their equipment provided the material for this film. Using a cliché B-movie script, the studio designs workflow patterns to standardise and accelerate the production process for future work – providing the the perfect model of cinema (i.e. girls, guns, assassins).The film attempts to follow this assembly line, and from it propose a new one. Like finding instructions in a school textbook and rearranging them into profanity.
Nina Wiesnagrotzki, Sansui Landscape, HD video, 2014
Artificially built miniatures of the Mount Fuji are made publicly accessible in urban neighbourhoods as alternate pilgrimage sites. The anime protagonist Heidi is one of the most famous heroes in Japanese popular culture. In March 2011 a Tsunami causes a nuclear disaster. Sansui Landscape is a collaged, associative reflection on the links between tradition and catastrophe in Japan, seen through the eyes of a half Japanese, who never lived there.
Aurelio Kopainig & Julia Mensch, Malvinas Argentinas, Córdoba, Image and text, 2015
In 1996 the first genetically modified (GM) crop was commercially released for cultivation in Argentina: Monsanto's Roundup ReadyTM glyphosate-tolerant soybeans. Since then, the monoculture model – of which GM-soy is the principal protagonist – is applied in Argentina as if territories were open laboratories, without taking the precautionary principle into consideration. After 19 years the negative socio-ecological consequences, disturbing health issues and scientific evidence are piling up and it becomes more difficult to silence them.
In 2012 Monsanto's investment plan to build one of the world-biggest corn seed processing plants in the town of Malvinas Argentinas in Córdoba is announced. Its construction has been blocked for two years by local movements. Malvinas Argentinas has become a symbol of the growing distrust and resistance against the agro-industry and the neo-extractivist model.
The work is a first note from an ongoing shared investigation in Argentina.
Antonia Cattan, Alice Dalgalarrondo, ES – Evangelical State, HD video, 2015
The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) was was founded in 1977 in Rio de Janeiro by Bishop Edir Macedo. His rapidly growing religious movement and his teaching of prosperity theology have made him one of the most influential figures in the country.
Having Macedo as a main character, the video intends to depict a dystopian future in which the Evangelical Forces have taken the power and established a totalitarian regime. Imagining Brazil ruled by the Evangelical state, with the Internet heavily controlled, it would be only through a computer terminal that one could have access to "illegal" data bank with uncensored information.
Created with found footage, this fictional narrative suggests the extinction of Brazil, the institution of the ES and it's apocalyptical consequences.
Elektra KB, The Accidental Pursuit of the Stateless, HD video, 2015
"The Accidental Pursuit of the Stateless" is a two-part utopia-dystopia on a mythological platform. It entails KB's performances based on several real life experiences from an anonymized fellow Colombian migrant and former political prisoner. A political refugee that immigrated to Germany during the post Berlin Wall turmoil in the 90's, with whom the artist worked together with and became a close friend. The first part of the film introduces the viewer to the Theocratic Republic of Gaia, which plays with critical humor and the aesthetics of colonial art tropes and the insurgent struggle KB grew up with, using pre-Hispanic imagery. The T.R.O.G is a parallel universe fighting between the tensions built on a totalitarian state and the revolutionary Cathara Insurgency, situating itself close to the political sci-fi genre and the Decolonial critique.
Adrian Gutzelnig, Longing, installation, 2015
Slate is one of the materials that has been amongst humans for a long time. it can be shaped in highly regular ways which makes it suitable for lots of different purposes. One example is roofing. Already in the stone age it was providing shelter from nature's moods.
The sculpture re-animates Slate tile for sensual experience. Touching the stone is allowed and welcome.
Paida Larsen, Calais-Dover, HD video, 2012
Calais-Dover was a project made in collaboration with the artist Julian Öffler focusing on the situation of emigrants in Europe in 2012 and how the media and society reflected or handled it. We believe that the situation was met with either ignorance or passiveness rather than true interest in coping with the problem from media, society and politicians.We decided to go to Calais in France, a gathering point for emigrants trying to get to England, showing the same kind level of ignorance or passiveness towards the emigrants and their situation. In Calais we made contact with some of them and convinced them to produce artworks for us in form of paintings and pictures. We also built a raft on the beach with which we tried to cross the English Channel. Throughout the whole journey we lived and travelled under best conditions to underline our privileges compared to the emigrants. The works has since been represented in different settings and institutions, always trying to underline the contradiction in selling the project as art, and at the same time trying to relate to and understand the situation of the emigrants. Now more than three years later the situation in Europe has drastically changed and the question how we relate to the increasing amount of emigrants and respond to their needs is more relevant than ever before as it is clear that it is impossible to ignore it.
Maximillian Schmoetzer,Preliminary Material for 2022, HD video, 2015
The storyline follows the Red Bull sponsored event of Felix Baumgartner, who jumps off the edge of the atmosphere in 2012. Baumgartner was the first
human who broke the sonic barrier in free fall. The narration of the video juxtaposes his fall with an asteroid-like entity that threatens mankind, as occurred millions of years ago to the dinosaurs. In this case however, the force is not so much an actual, external one, but mediated from within society.
Barbara Marcel, Victoria Amazonica, HD video, 2015
Victoria Amazonica is the first chapter of a historiographical series about the Botanical Garden Berlin-Dahlem and the origin of its plants. The different geographies and time-frames contained in the garden are accessed through video narratives, in a spectral experience with its space and contemporary materialities. The ongoing project begins with a story about the Amazonian Water Lily plant and its colonial roots. How to contemplate one of the largest aquatic plants in the world, without drowning in its reflections?
Charlotte Eiffler, The Sun Estate, 2 channel HD video, 2015
The eye is magnified and deeply revealed.
Flecks of green and yellow in a field of milky blue.
The presence of the body with the absence of the mind,
a perfect machine working unwittingly.
Is it the same day? He doesn't know.
Uncertain navigation in between – not rising up but hanging below. Seriously there, never for real, perfect for the cause.
The earth in the future – the addiction of a second sun supersedes the night. People begin to replace sleep by rest, the first
Sleeplessness children are born.
Due to the permanent light and a lack of altering nature, time as a 3 part structure of past, present and future dissolves.
Georgina Hill, The Persistence of Belief, HD video 2015
The video, a trailer for a longer piece in development, is centred on the interplay between medicine and belief: the undervalued role that the mind and system of medicine plays in the efficacy of treatment. Medicine might be seen as a type of religion, promising longer life and salvation through the paraphernalia of medical legitimacy (white coats, the stethoscope, rubber gloves) as well as well-financed efforts by big pharma and research labs to promote the impression that they are the key to solving problems that all too often remain unsolved.
Anna Kędziora, Sacrum Intolerandus, installation, 2014
Sacrum Intolerandus is inspired by the notion of landscape-power relationship in the context of Western European colonialism. From the perspective of Europe, ruled by the new spirit of capitalism, the sacredness of oversea exotic landscapes was difficult to accept. The space of fascination and expectations was firstly the space of economical desire. Colonial landscape was a sacrum which had to be conquered, possessed, re-shaped, utilised. Desacralised. Turned into a profane instrument of power.
Sacrum Intolerandus touches upon the notion of artificial mobility and forced displacement,as well as of formations, trans-formations and de-formations of landscape. Colonial urge to re-organize and systematize the Exotic represents a more universal, human urge to re-organize and systematize the Natural. In a perpetual gesture of a relentless gardening, landscapes are still being de-constructed and re-constructed according to effective power relations.
Bruno Siegrist, On Standardization or how to make sure us humans will win the battle against nature, lecture Performance, 2015
Paradox City
Paradox City
Group show
Opening: 06.11.2015, 7 pm
06.11 – 21.11.2015
Artists: Murray Anderson, Mirela Bistran, Mustafa Boga, Przemysław Branas, Giles Bunch, Caren Hession, Tobiasz Jędrak, Monika Karczmarczyk, Edyta Kowalewska, Robert Kowalski, Zofia Cecylia Kuligowska, Ruth Lyons, Piotr Madej, Agnieszka Majewska, James McCann, Fernando García Méndez, Filippo Francesco Montalbano, Weronika Naskręcka, Lars Ellefsen Nordby, Anssi Pulkkinen, Iwo Rachwał, Tullia La Rosa, Martyna Rzepecka, Jana Shostak, Kolbrun Inga Gunnlaugsdottir Söring, Łukasz Stylec, Taro Takizawa, Dorota Tylka, Wojciech Ulman, Mary Vettise, Adam Walker, Kim Wilson, Elizabeth Wright.
PARADOX City is a project, which took place in September this year in Poznań, Poland. It was organised by University of Arts in Poznań in cooperation with academic network of European art schools – PARADOX Fine Art European Forum; UAP Foundation and Culture Centre ZAMEK. The project was carried out as part of an international conference entitled: Alternative Zones: Uncovering the Official and the Unofficial in Fine Art Practice, Research and Education.
35 students and graduate students of European art schools participated in the project. They took part in 10-day-long workshop focusing on a topic: Reactivating Central Poznan. The students were given professional and artistic help by three distinguished Polish artists and professors: Janusz Bałdyga and Piotr Kurka (University of Arts in Poznań) and Łukasz Skąpski (Art Academy in Szczecin).
The artists, taking part in the project, were interested mainly in problems, which also bother Poznań city residents. Commercialisation of the city centre, urban and social degradation of its parts – they all create new, previously unknown problems. On closer observation and analysis of the unsettling phenomena, it is possible to perceive that the processes involved also concern other cities in the world. They posses a universal dimension, for that reason they open up a discussion in which individual experiences and subjective observations may be confronted with ideas and suggestions of local governments, experts, activists representing social organisations and people living in the cities. We felt that it would be valuable to share with a wide group of viewers perceptions and reflections of young artists provoked by their experience of visiting Poznań. We hope that fresh, and often unconventional outlook of young and sensitive artists, may also be interesting for residents of other cities. Especially that their observations, reflections and proposals turned out to be so varied and in many cases they took a very interesting art form.
The link between artists' observations with their earlier experiences and individual language of expression, allowed them to create many intriguing projects. It all gave in turn an interesting exhibition, which we have a great pleasure to present to you.
Please join us at UP Gallery
Prof. Andrzej Syska
Project Coordinator
Paradox Chair
Vice-chancellor of University of Arts in Poznań
MURRAY ANDERSON lives and works in London. His interest lies in the affective potential of objects, re-remembrance of minor cultural castoffs, ambiguity, and empathy.
TARO TAKIZAWA lives & works in Syracuse, NY, USA
My work contains my experiences of relocating and transplanting myself to different locations. The memories of being temporary existence becomes fragments of experiences in my life which forms my work.http://cargocollective.com/tarotakizawa
MIRELA BISTRAN lives & works in England
I have an on-going interest in the concepts of belonging, memory and identity, which are explored through materials and marks.
MUSTAFA BOGA lives & works in England. Mustafa Boga's works examine the fine lines that separate art and documentary, journalism and fiction, drama and scripted reality and how this has led to the trivialization of issues such as discrimination and prejudice and how contemporary multi-media manipulates our understanding of current affairs.
GILES BUNCH lives & works London, UK. Giles' work focuses on the ways in which people engage with their cultural landscape, often taking peculiar social occurrences and encounters as his starting points.
CAREN HESSION lives & works West of Ireland
My work revolves around historical human equine relationships and the contemporary use of the horse as a medium to transport thoughts and emotions associated with social and emotional conditioning.www.spiritusstudios.com
RUTH LYONS lives & works Cork, Ireland
My work is concerned with landscape and the manner in which land is shaped by industry particularly those of mining and energy production.www.ruth.ie
VENA NASKRĘCKA, Nomadic lifestyle, lives and works in many different places. She has focused her research on human perception and phenomenology. New technology used in medicine and prosthetics and new knowledge about perception provide reasons to redefine what the body and objects are. For her, an act of transformation is initiated by the challenge of new situations.www.venaskrecka.wordpress.com
FILIPPO FRANCESCO MONTALBANO aka Il Dottore (The Doctor) lives & works in Sicily, Italy. His projects focus on identities and social patterns.
LARS NORBY lives & works Oslo, Norway and Vishovgrad, Bulgaria. His projects focus on identities and social patterns. www.larsnordby.com
TULLIA LA ROSA lives & works Palermo, Italy
The themes of my works are different but all concern the documentation of reality using different means and techniques of representation.https://vimeo.com/user22392021
DOROTA TYLKA lives and works in Cracow.
I follow in my practice an old highlander's saying: nothing makes me happier than other's misery. I am interested in things/concepts which are commonly perceived as 'sad'. Everybody knows that everything dies, rots, falls apart, angers us, begs, pains, does not fall into any logical sense, is crippled, shouts, seems to be ugly or soon becomes ugly, does not fit, shows hostility, attacks, cries – is generally speaking absurd, which I have a great pleasure to observe.
MARY VETTISE lives & works London, UK vimeo.com/maryvettise
ADAM JB WALKER lives & works London, UK. His work seeks to explore the relationship between labour and value, ephemerality, subjectivity and the (in)significance of an 'event'. Tending to work situation- and context- specifically.www.adamjbwalker.co.uk
KIM W. WILSON lives & works Edinburgh, Scotland
Matter is substance and force; my practice asserts that reality is not mere social construction, but that matter matters in its mattering.www.kimwilson.com
ELIZABETH WRIGHT lives & works Lincoln, UK. Elizabeth Wright's work explores how objects 'mean' or rather, how we invest into things and how they embody stuff and subsequently provoke emotional responses from us.
ZOFIA KULIGOWSKA lives & works Warsaw, Poland
My work derives from interest in human spirituality in relation to body science, and therefore scientific answer to body perceived as electromagnetic frequency. I am inspired by the idea of contact, not only among human beings but also their memories and imaginations.zofiakuligowska.com
email: firstname.lastname@example.com
WOJCIECH ULMAN lives & works Warsaw, Poland Ulman, in his practice, often touches existential themes; he often juxtaposes them with cosmic absurd. https://vimeo.com/ulman
ROBERT KOWALSKI lives & works in Katowice, Poland
I have been working on Unreal Engine 4 for a year. It allows the viewer to create a virtual reality. Viewers gain new experiences thanks to using third dimension. My other works touched such subjects as prison, cosmos imaginations and translation of old masters into new media.
PIOTR MICHAŁ MADEJ lives & works in Cracow, Poland. Madej is a composer, sound producer, creative coder. He plays violin, guitar and electronic instruments. I like improvisation. I am interested in art in immersion, and ways of engaging viewers in art co-creation through interaction. I often work in co-operation with other artists.http://piotrmadej.16mb.com
MARTYNA RZEPECKA lives and works between two cities – Poznań and Toruń, Poland. Main themes include intimate, carnality, everyday life, femininity, sensuality, synesthesia. The artist creates art in printmaking, drawing and video projects. She's an author of many art workshops, she cooperates with Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Toruń and CK Zamek w Poznaniu. www.martrzepecka.blogspot.com
TOBIASZ JĘDRAK lives and works Poznań, Poland
architecture as a musical instrument, impossible and unattainable architecture, body in space and body as architecture, peripheries, boundaries, city as a place of permanent location, landscape as a self- portrait, invisible art, art outside art, at without an artist.
MONIKA KARCZMARCZYK lives and works Warsaw, Poland
FERNANDO GARCIA MENDEZ lives and works Granada, Spain
KOLBRUN INGA SÖRING lives and works Utrecht, The Netherlands.
I work from a field guide of a self made term The Sculptoric Poem. The Sculptoric Poem is the imperfect map, a territory of the mind, of the imagination. Where there is no truth but expression. An abstract formula that dances around the act of combining poetic writing with the notion of sculpture.' 'I am creating a sets of worlds each independent from the other, but they intertwine, like all that I have experienced, all that is now apart of my personal Atlas.http://cargocollective.com/kolbruninga
AGNIESZKA MAJEWSKA lives and works Gdańsk, Poland
The themes encompass such issues as time and memory. I find my starting points for further investigations in family memorabilia confronted with my own memories. In my painting, colour is like time. I use black, greys and white to communicate the times that went past. The times that happened a long time ago. Colour appears with memories which are dearer and dearer for me. An effort I put into remembering memories is illustrated by embroidery, which obscures the view.
EDYTA KOWALEWSKA lives and works Gdańsk, Poland
In my works I consider the sociological concept of the table our culture. I wonder what for me is this place. Perhaps it is my "non- places"
JAMES MCCANN Two things which have consistently underlined my practice are, a perversion of utility, and a non verbal communication through the disarticulation of the art object.
IWO RACHWAŁ lives and works Warsaw, Poland
Book and What Next
Book and What Next
Group show
Opening: 25.09.2015, 7 pm
25.09 – 17.10.2015
Artists: Joanna Adamczewska, Katarzyna Bogusz, Roman Bromboszcz, Aleksandra Jurek, Evgeniia Klemba, Jarosław Kozłowski, Ann Noël, Tomasz Wilmański, Weronika Wronecka
Language ossifying in the buildings of Academia seeks refuge in children and "mad" poets
[Raoul Hausmann]
The above provocative statement by the German artist Raoul Hausmann, one of the leading figures of early twentieth century avant-garde, sets the tone for an innovative approach to the matter of letter, word and book, an inspiration for ever new artists, starting with the first experiments with the new recording of text used by the Futurists ("words at large") and the Dadaists (simultaneous poetry, opto phonetic poetry), through the creative experiments of the Lettristes, concrete poets and sonore poets, Fluxus, artists of the art books and liberature, until present-day works connected with cyber poetry and hypertext, based on cutting-edge computer technology. These are but some of the art phenomena with a marked impact on how we think about the book or arrangements of letters, a source of inspiration of and starting point for artistic creation. The art book gained a special status in art in 1977, when a separate section was dedicated to it at the prestigious international exhibition Documenta 6 in Kassel. As Ulises Carrión wrote in The New Art of Making Books: A book may be the accidental container of a text, the structure of which is irrelevant to the book. A book can also exist as an autonomous and self-sufficient form, including perhaps a text that emphasizes that form, a text that is an organic part of that form: here begins the new art of making books. The book understood in this way loses its traditional sense and begins to operate as a new being within the realm of art. It is often made/manufactured by an artist by hand, from beginning to end, and is thus a unique work of art.
The exhibition's title BOOK AND WHAT NEXT was taken from a series of exhibitions organized since 1990 by the AT Gallery, established at the University of Arts in Poznan. In this series the Gallery presents a diverse range of artistic expression referring directly or indirectly to the visual and acoustic values of writing and books, an intellectual functioning in a layer on the border of the visual arts and literature and poetry. Most artists invited to this exhibition are associated with the AT Gallery and have previously presented their work in this series of presentations. The BOOK AND WHAT NEXT exhibition presents works of artists from different generations, dealing with the art book (Adamczewska, Bogusz, Jurek, Klemba, Wilmański, Wronecka), visual poetry (Bromboszcz, Noël), animation lettering (Wilmański), book objects (Kozłowski), or the exercise books on principles of acoustic performance (Adamczewska). The main goal of the exhibition is to show the diversity of artistic approaches to the book in its wider meaning, integrally linked to the text, word and letter. Many of the works presented in this exhibition come from the Collection of the Studio of Art Books.
Curator of the exhibition: Tomasz Wilmański
Joanna Adamczewska (b. 1959) in the years 1980-85 she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan (currently UAP). Activeprimarily in art books and visual poetry.
Katarzyna Bogusz (b. 1990) a student at the University of Arts in Poznan.
Roman Bromboszcz (b. 1976) studied art history and philosophy at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. Active in the art of intermedia and computer reinterpretation of various avant-garde poetry and science, including philosophy and cybernetics.
Aleksandra Jurek studied at the University of Arts in Poznan (graduated 2015). Active primarily in graphic design and art books.
Evgeniia Klemba (Russia) is a student at the University of Arts in Poznan.
Jarosław Kozłowski (b. 1945) in the years 1963-69 he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan (currently UAP). A professor at the University of Arts in Poznan. Active, among others, in installations, art books and books objects.
Ann Noël (b. 1944, England) in the years 1964-68 she studied at Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, England. Active primarily in visual poetry, printmaking and art books.
Weronika Wronecka is a student at the University of Arts in Poznan.
Tomasz Wilmański (b. 1956) in the years 1977-82 studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan (currently UAP). In 1982 he founded the AT Gallery, which has operated under his leadership to date. He conducts classes with students at the Studio of Art Book in UAP. Active primarily in art books and visual poetry.
Behind Images
Behind Images
Artists: Melissa Jordan, Roland Schefferski
Opening: 02.07.2015, 7 pm
Behind Images brings together two artists whose concerns lie primarily in the abstraction and partial presence of altered photographs. To question what was and what could be, Schefferski and Jordan in turn take, remove and distort flat photographic images from contemporary culture.
Jordan's work focuses on the investigation of photographic images and their potential to be transformed based on alteration and context. Objects and places are alienated from their origins and once removed, presented as abstracted and at times repetitive forms. Compressed in a single new surface, the images are recreated with sculptural plasticity. These pieces question materiality, symbols of representation and the flatness of images in visual culture. Once re-assimilated the images reveal their own 'blue-print', which is released within its new context. She challenges the role of narrative and cinematic clichés in image-led works. Looking at how images (say a photo of a car interior 'Passengers' series) become cliché and thus affects the viewer immediately, like the idea of a Google image search as a shared visual memory. Going against cliché, her images are photographic 'non-places'; they allude to, for example, the turning of a page of a magazine. The action of turning the page is the focus, not the actual page. Her photographs and sculptures are slippery, highlighting the animated nature of her work. She has produced the works for Behind Images following a research trip to Neukölln; they were made with Richardstrasse in mind.
Schefferski explores a constellation of texts and pictures in newspapers to initiate a discussion about the manipulative character of photographs in the print media. This theme is reflected in a whole series of works, exhibitions and projects realised by the artist over many years. In a series of works called Empty Images Financial Time(s) he questions the relationship between photographs and the reality documented by mass media as a calculated political manoeuvre.
Instead of generating new images, which could be added to this tactically visual universe, in Empty Images Schefferski deletes photographs from pages of various newspapers. He leaves a thin colour frame, a trace of the cutting out process. This trace highlights the lack of images and the words become reduced to the role of passe-partout. In the later works he cut out front-page-photographs to reveal deeper layers of the complete newspaper. In this way, the headlines seemed to be confronted with the photographs from the pages underneath. In the whole process of his artistic deconstruction he takes subtle control of images in the mass media. Significant for him is the question: how do images operate within the cultural memory and what influence they have on the cultural and collective memory of an individual and the whole society.
Through the removal and transformation of the images, the artists play with initial reference points. The materiality of papers and prints is emphasised and critical. The results question the purpose and suggestive nature of images in our visual culture.
Melissa Jordan's approach to images is atypical and explores the physical nature of flattened images in our contemporary culture. Through both sculpture and photography the abstracted images are reformed. These works lend themselves to their original formats: the cinematic and the light box screen; the printed image and the magazine. Born in 1984 and raised in Cambridge, UK she has been living in London since 2002 having moved to study her BA Sculpture at Chelsea Art College. Following a MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art (2009) she has had numerous UK exhibitions in London, Liverpool (Ceri Hand, Cave Art Fair to coincide with the Biennial) and Cambridge. This is her second exhibition in Berlin. For her solo show Hard Shoulder at Hayward Gallery Concrete Café 2014 Jordan produced site specific works that reflected on the history of the sinister, concrete building and the large, omnipresent parasols that stand outside. In 2015 she produced her first Artist Book Spine launched at Horatio Junior (London). Alongside exhibiting work, Jordan focuses on printed works that can reach a wider audience. She has had solo publications in the Hayward Gallery and Tate Modern bookshop and had a recent commission for Lula magazine (2014) Into the Fold which was a reconsideration of high gloss imagery printed in a high gloss magazine. A new venture is a collaboration with menswear designer Shaun Samson for his Autumn Winter 2015 collection. She has upcoming print commissions for music magazine CLASH (CLASH100) and Talc magazine this year.
Roland Schefferski uses various media to realize his artistic concepts according to their requirements. In his work, the artist takes the role of a critical analyst of everyday reality, often using it in unconventional ways for artistic purposes. One of his consistent artistic strategies is manifested in his works, which deal with different qualities of perception and remembering of the pictorial image as an iconic form. The focus of his attention is the question: how do images operate within the cultural memory and what influence do they have on the cultural and collective memory? The manipulative character of pictures in the mass media is a theme reflected in a whole series of works and exhibitions realised by the artist over many years.
Schefferski's exhibitions and projects include, among others, National Museum in Krakow, Maerkisches Museum in Berlin, Museum of Warmia and Masuria in Olsztyn, Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdansk, Gallery of the Upper Austrian Museum in Linz, Kunstsammlungen in Chemnitz, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie in Regensburg and Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. In addition to exhibitions and projects within institutional spaces, the artist also realizes his works in public spaces. For Schefferski a street, a garden, a store or a library are also relevant places where he can present art, as well as traditional exhibition spaces. For example,Schefferski deposited his artworks as commonly objects for the commission sale in a second-hand shop in Berlin and in an antique store in Gdansk. He also exhibited on the streets of Warsaw with a billboard saying "Create your own image of Berlin." During his walks in Frankfurt (Oder), Słubice and Warsaw, he lost coins minted for this occasion. He lent to the exhibition visitors in different cities – recently in Krakow – clothes marked with embroidered human silhouettes. He also installed his works in the gardens of Brandenburg; in a historic Temple of Pomona, Potsdam. Roland Schefferski was born 1956 in Poland. From 1976 to 1981 he studied sculpture at the State College of Visual Arts, Wrocław. Since 1984 has been living and working in Berlin.
Emergency Ward
Not-Aufnahme / Emergency Ward
Group show
26.06.2015 – 28.06.2015
Opening: 26.06.2015, 7pm
Artists participating: Janusz Bałdyga, Valentina Bardazzi, Marcin Berdyszak, Jakub Bolewski, Marta Bosowska, Sławomir Brzoska, Elena Gavrisch, Martyna Hadyńska, Leann Herlihy, Szymon Kula, Dominik lejman, Sarah Lüdemann, Adam Łuczak, Mirco Magnani, Paulina Kempisty, Paulina Pankiewicz, Julia Popławska, Patrycja Plich, Łukasz Prus-Niewiadomski, Przemysław Przepióra, Petro Riaska, Fried Rosenstock, Roland Schefferski, Mateusz Smoczyk, Paweł Tymcio.
The motto of this year's festival 48 Stunden Neukölln is S.O.S. – Art saves the world. In response to this call, which suggests that we are in a state of emergency, the UP Gallery sets up an EMERGENCY WARD – NOT-AUFNAHME open for the duration of the festival. Working with intercultural approach, based in Berlin's Neukölln since 2014, the UP Gallery will turn its rooms into Waiting and Consulting Rooms offering artistic first aid' to festival participants and visitors.
The project NOT-AUFNAHME' invites guests to be a part of a 'rescue concept' in an interactive project, which questions the notion of art as a finalized instance done and served by the artist for viewer's consumption. Apart from showing their works as 'Art in the Waiting Room, the participating artists will create a space for dialogue through series of performances and actions, inviting the public to discuss themes of perception and art's role in society as well diagnosing other contemporary problems in the 'consulting room'.
The project 'NOT-AUFNAHME' is a result of the collaboration between the UP Gallery and the IFNAT – Institute for New Artistic Thinking (IFNAT). Berlin artists founded the Institute as an ongoing project in November 2014. The mission of the IFNAT is to provoke new ways of the artistic thinking, facing the challenges of the close interrelation of the arts and the contemporary market economy. The institute's platform for exchange and discussions is on the blog, which is open for contributions from artists and other cultural workers.
Mariia Drozdova, born 6.1988 Kharkov.Ukraine, is studying performance art, in professor Janusz Baldyga's class, as part of GAUDE POLONIA scholarship. She works with painting, drawing, photography, collage, performance, video art. Participated in competitions, group and solo exhibitions both in Ukraine and abroad.
Julia Popławska – graduated from Art University in Poznań, specialized in Art Critic on the Art Education department. Her movie If you really want something (2013) was presented on the ARTBOOM Festival in Cracow, on the main exhibition: The face of Day. Social Costs in Poland after 1989, curated by Stanisław Ruksza. The film also accompanied debates organized by: MS in Łódź, Galeria Miejska Arsenał in Poznań, Political Critique editorial office in Warsaw, Anarchistic Club/Bookstore Zemsta in Poznań. Now, she is studing MA of Intermedia on the Multimedia Communications department (UAP).
Paweł Tymcio, born in 1989. Student of Painting at the University of Arts in Poznan. He has chosen dr Dominik Lejmans studio for his main painting studio. He has also studied at the Politechnika Szczecińska. He has taken part in group exhibitions, for e.g. "Experimental Drawing" at the gallery Forma, a group exhibition of work at Galeria Kapitańska. In 2013 he took in an international painting competition Modessque, in which he got through to the final stage. In his work he focuses on on the problem of memory, transience and human emotion, which he explores by painting, installation and performance. His last show was an individual exhibition in the Kolektyw A1 gallery in Poznań.
Léann Herlihy (1994) is originally studying at the National College of Art & Design Dublin (2012-2016), this Irish based artist has no uniformed roots when discussing her artistic practice. Her constructions tend to be fixed with a single point, in which the distribution of forces and the dramatic meaningful climax is of primary importance. She shows how a hardly visible component can become the most significant element from the point of view and survival of her whole composition. Recent exhibitions include XVII International Art Festival Interakcje, Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland (2015); Klasycy i Adepci i Polskiej Sztuki Performance, Katowice, Poland (2015); UNEASE//NIEPOKÓJ, Up Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2015); Studio, Elbana House, Marrowbone Lane, Dublin 8 (2014);Stendhal Arts Festival, Limavady, Derry (2014); At dawn we will stand in a circle, as the sun rises it will renew the souls of the pure, NCAD Gallery, Dublin (2014) and We'll come up with {some}thing, Jamestown Studios, Inchicore, Dublin (2013).
Off the record
Off the record
Group show
22.05 – 20.06.2015
Opening: 22.05.2016, 7 pm
Artists: Urszula Kluz-Knopek, Gizela Mickiewicz, Natalia Wiśniewska, Dawid Marszewski, Tomasz Drewicz
Although the opening of the exhibition entitled "Off the record", is scheduled for two days before a possible second round of presidential elections, the organizers reserve that it does not apply, in any way, to the current political situation. The artists invited to the project, are focused in on a more universal content, such as: memory, process, social relationships and motherhood.
To quote Dr. Tomasz Drewicz – curator of the exhibition: The proposed title is merely a slogan and should be treated as broadly as possible. It refers to what is smuggled. What is important or even more important than the official version, but for various reasons can not be shown directly – it must function as a conjecture. It is unwritten rule – strictly confidential – that influences the process of constructing the message. In this area, there are located also differently understood imperfections, faults, mistakes and errors that are sometimes only an inspiration and a starting point for the taking something into consideration, but sometimes they are made consciously, in order to exert overrational influence on the recipient. The exhibition presents works of five young, Polish artists who, although have different means of expression, but they represent some common approach to the issues related to building a formal content of the work, as well as their final exposure. They all are associated with the Poznań University of the Arts, which with all certainty, is not without significance.
Urszula Kluz-Knopek (born in 1985) intermedia artist, using the installation, video and photography. Particularly interested in the relationship between the object and the recipient, in which the second one is never only an observer. She is a doctoral student at the Faculty of Intermedia on the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. She graduate the University of Arts in Poznan. For several years, she's the owner of the "Studio Bakłażan" graphic studios, and she is a member of STGU (Graphic Designers Association). A scholar of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. She also works as a mentor in the project "Link to the Future for Information Society Development Foundation" funded by Microsoft. Editor-in-chief of the Woof Woof Arf Arf – artistic and scientific magazine.
Gizela Mickiewicz (born in 1984) graduated from the Poznań Academy of Fine Arts. In 2014 she took residence in Gasworks in London; she also had a solo exhibition at the Frieze art fair. She participated in many collective exhibitions, including "As you can see: Polish Art Today" at the Museum of Modern Art as well as in its sequel, "Procedures for the head. Polish Art Today" at the Kunsthalle Bratislava. Solo shows include Frutta, Rome (2013), BWA Zielona Góra, Poland (2013), Galeria Stereo, Warsaw (2015) and Poznań (2011). Coperates with Stereo Gallery. She lives and works in Warsaw.
Natalia Wiśniewska (born in 1985) studied at University of Arts in Poznań, where in 2010 she obtained a diploma in graphics. The co-founder and the curator of the Miłość Gallery in Toruń. She is a PhD student at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, majoring in the Visual Arts. The author of installations, objects, site-specific actions. She is experimenting with sound and form. In her works she undertakes research on relation- ships and mutual entanglement of the individual in the socio-cultural processes. She works contextually combining the simplicity of form with the place and the semantics of language. Her interests focus on what appears at the junction of concepts and meanings. Lives and works in Toruń. She has completed a number of solo and group exhibitions in places such as: the Wschodnia Gallery in Łódź, the Otwarta Pracownia in Cracow, the AT Gallery in Poznań, the Galeria Działań in Warsaw, the CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, the CoCA Znaki Czasu in Toruń, the ZAMEK Culture Centre in Poznań.
Dawid Marszewski (born in 1991). Since 2011, a student of the Faculty of Painting at the University of Arts in Poznan. By 2014 he received his bachelors degree with distinction. He is an assistant in the XII Painting Studio.He has received many awards and scholarships of: Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Prime Minister of Poland, the Rector of the UAP. Winner of artistic ExkluzivPrize2013. Finalist of many Polish and international competitions. He has participated in several group exhibitions. What I am dealing with is the Memory and its impact on social relations. I'm interested in the boundary between the individual and the so-called "collective memory". In my – often ironic realizations – I invite the viewer to re–design his own sentiment. I examine the impact of history on contemporary culture, as well as the states of fear, ignorance and uncertainty.
Tomasz Drewicz (born in 1982) – artist, curator, critic and organizer of cultural activities. In the years 2001-2005 he studied at the Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Environmental Engineering at the Technical University of Poznan. In the years 2004–2009 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan. He graduated from the Faculty of Art Education in two specialties: Promotion and Art Criticism and Art Pedagogy. Second degree in the field of sculpture. Since 2009, He is working at his alma mater – currently as an adjunct in the VI Sculpture Studio. Laureate of scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage "Młoda Polska" in 2010 and Poznan Artistic Scholarship in 2011. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions. Publishes texts in polish and foreign magazines. He lives and works in Poznan.
…about my Josephines…
…about my Josephines…
Artist: Izabella Gustowska
10.04 – 09.05.2015
Opening: 10.4.2015, 7 pm
And thinking about the word recreativity and why the future is so deeply rooted in the past, she suddenly hears the song with Gershwin's music from the Funny Face movie and all fits into a single whole composed of fragments of three similar sunny mornings.
Morning Sun – NYC – 1952
The 68-year-old Josephine Hopper poses for a painting titled Morning Sun on a winter morning of 22 February 1952 and jots down in her diary: Edward working on Girl sitting up on bed looking out big window over red brick rooves. I posing occasionally.
Morning Sun – Poznań – 2010
A Canon 5d camera records Iza G ., seated on a bed one February morning in 2010, red light filling the entire bedroom…
Morning Sun – NYC – 2013
the wind blows linen curtains in an empty studio; a smell from the Hudson will reach the place and the sun will shine on the face of the first Josephine – Kate
this is how the most important scene in the movie will start, thirteen women in succession on a pink bed.
What can thirteen women do in pink bed sheets on a sunny morning in NYC in 2013.
She already knows that Abigail – the irate Abi – will jump up and down in a shirt with an inscription: don't worry be happy",
and Sari will produce a copybook from beneath the pillow and start to read the words of Jo Hopper of 06 12.1949,
and then a shoulder strap of Annelise's somewhat dirty shirt will drop, but the text will be so strong that…
It is the nature of animals to be gloomy after love
Ed has done something very advancing to that canvas this after noon put shadows in back ground that does much for deepening the room. He was saying regarding his buxom prima donna for whom I couldn't be used to pose C'est la propre des animeaux d'etre triste apres l'amour. A fine name for his picture. He says it could scare off buyers.
And the space will once again be filled with a song from the film… Funny Face .., carried by the wind; thirteen hats will swirl and Naomi the sixth Josephine will say:
I'm no golden swan – MOI – I'm a winged skunk" /February 21, 1955/
Izabella Gustowska, born in Poznań, tenured professor, lectures at the University of Arts in Poznań, at the Faculty of Multimedia Comunications – Studio of Performative and Multimedia Activities, and at the Poznań Higher School of the Humanities and Journalism, at the Graphics major. Lives and works in Poznań. Applies a wide variety of media. Takes part in major international and Polish exhibitions. Her work can be found in museums, galleries and private collections in Poland and abroad. Most recent retrospective exhibition: Life is a Story, the National Museum in Poznań, 2007. Most recent publication: 66 Persons Search for Iza G., 2012. Most recent work: a 50-minute film The Case of Josephine H., 2014, made in NYC, and the publication: Hybrid, 2014. In 2014 the film The Case of Josephine H. was screened e.g. at the International Film Festival T-Mobile Era New Horizons in Wrocław, 11th Annual Big Apple Film Festival in NYC, New Voices, Ancient Echoes: Polish Women in Film in NYC and at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Currently the Artist is at work on the project Hybrid – a Media Story.
Opening: 20.03
.2015, 7 pm
20.03 – 6.04.2015
Artists: Janusz Bałdyga, Marta Bosowska
Performances during the opening by students of Performance Art Studio UAP: Barbara Deczkowska, Marta Drozdova, Martyna Hadyńska, Leann Herlihy, Justyna Kuchta, Szymon Kula, Paulina Pankiewicz, Patrycja Plich, Julia Popławska, Petro Riaska, Vitalll Shupliak, Mateusz Smoczyk, Paweł Tymcio, Witold Walny.
Unease is a state of mind which influence our body's actions. We can find it in minimal gesture or in constant transformation of character of our behaviour.
We observe infiltration of space-time dynamic structures of an action into the zone of the icon – in case of Janusz Bałdyga, and into an installation by Marta Bosowska.
Presented art works relate directly to significant performances or are a signal to "act". Placed in the space between fact and its documentation they picture unknown and uneasy, "in between" frontier area.
Students from Performance Art Studio, runned by Janusz Bałdyga and Marta Bosowska are invited for the opening night to create peculiar agora, space of communications free from arrangements, negotiations and norms recalling the idea of a group. What is left is a common space confronted with individual gesture.
Janusz Bałdyga (born 1954 in Lublin) from 1974 has been studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and he graduated in the studio of the professor Stefan Gierowski in 1979. Co-founder of the Pracownia, artist collective (1976-1981), co-manager of the Pracownia Gallery at the Dziekanka Student Art Centre (1976-1979) in Warsaw. Since 1979 he has been a member of the Akademia Ruchu theatre group. He is currently professor of Performance Art at the University of Arts in Poznań.
Janusz Bałdyga's main line of artistic activity is performance art. Over many years of practice, he has developed a unique style, characterised by a reduction of the language and means of articulation and the use of simple elements such as planks, nails, ropes, water, textiles or glass, which he uses to create elementary structures: the line, the circle, the rectangle, the point. He has introduced the term 'marked places' to denote space and its determinants, and the dynamics lent to it by human presence. The artist's body serves also as a construction element, an instrument of describing the surrounding space, a testimony of wrestling with matter (Inclinations, Attention, Border). Balancing around a critical point and attempting to reveal a sphere of latency are inherent to Bałdyga's work. His performances create a sense of pulling the viewer into the space and course of ritual. Their social, political or philosophical subtext leaves no doubt as to the artist's country of origin and tradition, without, however, in any way blurring the universal dimension of his highly individual communications. As the artist says himself, 'I am not a commentator but the creator of a particular situation which, being located in a specific space and time, cannot be free from socio-political references'.
Marta Bosowska (born 1984 in Kościan) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań in Critic and Education Department and Faculty of Sculpture and Space Activities. Since 2011 he has been working at the University of Arts in Poznan. She is also a member of Performance Art Foundation.
Marta Bosowska carries out installations and performance. She is interested in memory as a medium and component of a process of the work's coming into beginning. Her actions depict incessant searching, sorting, collecting, based on emotional content evoked through sign, sounds and places. The artist taps into simple gestures, situations, objects and materials surrounding humans in their daily lives, which, here acquire new meanings.
Performance Art Studio students:
Dobrawa Deczkowska (born 8 February 1990 in Chrzanów) – student of the third year scenography at the University of Arts in Poznań. She designed and performed a few theatre design in the group and individually. She is interested in decor, costume, sculpture and performance.
Martyna Hadyńska
I study second year painting in UAP.
I do performance, painting and drawing.
In my work I engage in womanhood, interrelations and emotions.
I like spontaneous actions.
Léann Herlihy – originally studying at the National College of Art & Design Dublin (2012-2016), this Irish based artist has no uniformed roots when discussing her artistic practice. Her constructions tend to be fixed with a single point, in which the distribution of forces and the dramatic meaningful climax is of primary importance. She shows how a hardly visible component can become the most significant element from the point of view and survival of her whole composition. The symbolism she suggests and her use of endurance to highlight the exaggerated protraction of time are enhanced by the symbiotic relationship with her audience, where the very act of their continued observation, in itself become ritualised behaviour and enabled a sense of communitas. Recent exhibitions include Studio, Elbana House, Marrowbone Lane, Dublin 8 (2014); Stendhal Arts Festival, Limavady, Derry (2014); At dawn we will stand in a circle, as the sun rises it will renew the souls of the pure, NCAD Gallery, Dublin (2014) and We'll come up with {some}thing, Jamestown Studios, Inchicore, Dublin (2013).
For more information please visit: www.cargocollective.com/LHartist
Áine Kelly is an Irish artist studying in the Crawford College of Art and Design. Her practice involves a multidisciplinary approach,comprising of photography, performance and drawing. In using her own body she explores the physical limitations of the body and attempts to demonstrate a balance of mind and body. Her most recent works investigates the bodily communication that exists beyond language. For more information on her work please visit: www.awnya.blogspot.com
Justyna Kuchta (born in 1990 in Koszalin) is a student of scenic design at the University of Arts in Poznań. Her work focuses mainly on stage design as well as costume design in drama theatre, opera house and dance theatre.
Szymon Kula – Born in 1994, studied at the High School of Fine Arts in Katowice. Currently he is studying at the Painting Department at the University of Arts in Poznań. He is a co-creator of "Kij w obraz" project, which organizes art meetings, discussions and shows. He is a holder of the scholarship by the Ministry of Culture and President of Katowice City. He has participated in workshops, competitions, exhibitions and festivals including "Student's drawing exhibition" in Toruń (2014) or "Trzy Czte Ry! Performance." in BWA Gallery in Zielona Góra (2015).
Paulina Pankiewicz is a PhD student at the Faculty of Intermedia, University of Arts, Poznań Between 2002- 2007 she did Master Program at the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. I'm interested in the interaction between my psychophysics and space. I try to combine my intellectual needs with my strong need of feeling the surrounding area also in the physical way. Corporeal and mental experience of space give me full view of it. My activity is focused on motion in space. I try to explore a field. By corporeal feeling I try to get close, to characterize it, describe, draw a contour. That is how I try to assimilate it.
Julia Popławska – graduated from Art University in Poznań, specialized in Art Critic on the Art Education Department. Her movie If you really want something (2013) presented on the ARTBOOM Festival in Kracow, on main exhibition The face of Day. Social Costs in Poland after 1989, curated by Stanisław Ruksza. The film accompanied also by debates organized by: MS in Łódź, Galeria Miejska Arsenał in Poznań, Political Critique e in Warsaw, Anarchistic Club/Bookstore Zemsta in Poznań. Now, she is studying MA of Intermedia on the Multimedia Communications Department (UAP).
Piotr Riaska, born 14.08.1975 in Transcarpathia, Ukraine. Between 2004 and 2009 she studied painting at Transcarpathia Institute of Art in Uzgorod, in Wiaczesław Prikhodko's Class. In 2015 she was awared with "Gaude Polonia" Scholarship in Poland, Poznań
Mateusz Smoczyk – I study at University of Arts in Poznań at the Painting Faculty. Through performance I explore notions of process, change, moment of start out. Time concept and its continual changeability from linear to cyclical and from cyclical to linear form are significant.
The Touch
Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko
06.02.- 05.03.2015
Opening: 06.02.2015, 7 pm
Artists: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Iwona Demko, Leszek Golec/Tatiana Czekalska, Natalia Janus – Malewska, Marek Kijewski/Kocur, Teresa Murak, Maria Pinińska – Bereś, Jan St. Wojciechowski<
Curator: Eulalia Domanowska
Collaboration: Leszek Golec
Coordination: Michał Grabowski
Special thanks to Stefania Zgudka
The exhibition, held by the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, focuses on the haptic in art. Appealing to the sense of touch exemplifies the transformations in the area of art over the past five decades, from Conceptualism and minimalism that primarily addressed our intellect, through to an art that stimulates our senses.
The sense of touch has for centuries been disregarded in Western culture as a potential for aesthetic experience, since we are strongly prejudiced against it. It is seen as the animalistic, carnal and less civilised human skill. And yet it has since time immemorial played a major role in art, in particular in sculpture. Touch is the key to our perception of space. We are able to recognise not only the tangible properties of objects but also the spatial relations between them. The subtlety and complexity of the spatial modelling of a sculpture becomes fully revealed only when it is "up close", "at the touch of the hand", and best yet in a hands-on experience
Taking part in the exhibition are Polish artists associated with the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, one of the few institutions worldwide focusing on broadly construed sculpture, installation and spatial art.
We show sculptures, installations, objects, and videos by artists of different generations, both renowned ones such as Magdalena Abakanowicz and Teresa Murak, and young ones like Natalia Janus; their work addresses the haptic in a host of different ways. The old work, by Jan S. Wojciechowski, comes still from the time of Conceptualism. It is accompanied by a Józef Robakowski film from Living Gallery series, paradoxically depicting the author's activity in the realm of sculpture. The duo Leszek Golec and Tatiana Czekalska have for years been active artists who pay close attention to our environment and opt for a harmonious co-existence with nature. Another duo, Marek Kijewski and Małgorzata Malinowska "Kocur", have since 1996 used in their work organic forms and atypical sculpture materials such as candy or jelly beans, which produce very sensual effects. The art of Maria Pinińska–Bereś and Iwona Demko exemplifies the feminist current. The use of soft, "women's" materials underscores the haptic nature of art.
Video Trailer "The Touch"
Deutsche Welle about "The Touch"
artists biographies
Nomadism – Who can afford it?
Nomadism – Who can afford it?
Discussion with Sławomir Brzoska, Mindaugas Gapsevicius, Marek Goździewski, Wahshi Kuhi
04.12.2014, 8pm
Nomadism means changing a residential location in search of better living conditions. Nomads travel to survive.
According to Gilles Deleuze's theory, nomadism is a movement between the codes of the world in order to shift their meaning, to confuse, and, in more radical cases, to change the rules. Nomadism stands for a radical, creative way of thinking that resists existing power relations.
In her book "Nomadic Subjects", Rosi Braidotti develops Deleuzian thought from a feminist perspective. She describes female subjectivity as a process of transgressing established identities in the direction of "alternative figurations" in order to discover new representations beyond the standard phallocentric vision of the subject.
Nomadism, for Deleuze and in Braidotti's work, is an intellectual construct that is tied to a lifestyle regarded as independent of economical and geopolitical constraints.
There are different nomads: those who enjoy the ability to move between cultural codes, languages, and geographical locations, with a subjectivity that never becomes fixed, and others who are forced by political, economic or social reasons to flee.
I would like to pose the following questions: Who is actually now in a position to freely choose a nomadic way of life? Is it only the privilege of the well-off?
Should the nomadic position be an uncomfortable one, in a state of confusion and tension? Isn't it paradoxical that some nomads move within a stable and established system as academics, university students with scholarships, or artists involved in the international art market, while other nomads dream of stability?
How can we use theories about nomadism to describe the current situation? How can we connect theory and art with the urgency of contemporary nomadic experience?
These and other questions I would like to discuss with the invited artists and curators.
(Text: Zofia Nierodzinska, Veronika Albrandt)
Artists: Sławomir Brzoska, Andreea Vladut, Rafał Górczyński
28.11.2014, 7pm
Weaving geometrical figures with kilometres of string, I have always emphasised the moment of work over the final effect. Work in the secluded gallery was a kind of meditation, when I had to watch almost every step, keep an eye on the tension of more and more lines, their parallelism. It required concentration on what is here – and – now. I have realised at some point that I am doing no less than travel, wandering in the spaces between the points set on walls, the floor and the ceiling in advance. The three-dimensional drawing is a trace of my body and hands left in the space. The installation is an image of wandering I had done, to the world that was visualised at its end.
The space is a kind of vessel which I fill in with the installation. I do not repeat the configuration in other spaces. Each work is based on different construction rules, dependent on natural characteristics I encounter in the space. I pay attention to architecture, construction details, windows' arrangement, lighting etc., to find a form which will enter a dialogue with the surroundings.
No less important in my experiencing the world is real travelling. Desert areas became especially close to me since my first trip to India, Asia and then the Middle East. In 2002 I wrapped in wool a postglacial boulder found on the bank of the River Yenisei in Tuva. Hundreds of its lines were superimposed on the stone. This was how the first '"Journey sketch" came into being.
Stones have been archetypal since time immemorial. Its permanence was tied with ancestor worship. Working with stones I invoke the collective memory of the human race, where special kinds of stones formed a centre, a reference point. Wool is rather nomadic while stones are permanent. We may therefore say that the gesture of wrapping is a combination of the two rudimentary manners of existence of the human being.
Sławomir Brzoska
How do we work?
How do we work?
07.11.2014, 8 pm
Discussion with: Christian Hasucha, Dominik Lejman, Fried Rosenstock, Roland Schefferski
What I propose, therefore,
is very simple: it is nothing more than to think what we are doing.
Hannah Arendt, Vita Activa
In a time of spiritual and cultural disorientation the dominant feeling is that of powerlessness. The place of an old order has been taken over by unconstrained capitalism in the realm of economics, in inner life by apathy and on a mental level by lack of vision and pragmatism. In this utterly changed political and spiritual situation, the expectations of the role of art have become more modest.
The consumer character of the contemporary art market, which often reduces art to entertainment and decoration that aspires to be a profitable investment of capital, could be a threat to its most important task: exploration of the human condition and the world we live in. In the realm of current forms of art presentation we are confronted with many obstacles that prevent engagement. It is therefore important that artists reflect the very process of artistic creation as well as processes that are taking place outside studios and galleries. The "true" art still exists, in the face of consumer art. It questions itself and its place in the cultural context, and it requires from us an ongoing revision of the artistic thesis as well as the artistic practice.
Talking about art cannot replace the works. But should its presence be reduced to the presentation of material objects, which are accompanied by marginal talks?
Instead of this kind of traditional presentation of art, coming together and the process of communication in a specific place are proclaimed to be a collective work of art.
A conversation could become a creative process of communication and presentation of art, at the centre of which are not only final products, but spiritual conditions and the intellectual processes that have led to its creation. It is an intention to find new solutions, through an inspiration that comes from creative articulation, mutual listening and collective reflection about the artistic work.
At least part of these conversations can be documented through images and sound. The traces can be a closure to the occurred exchange. When the action is over the space will be still available to the public. The traces that have been created during the dialogue will also remain in the space as a kind of record of this event in order to preserve the former presence of its participants.
Roland Schefferski, Berlin 2006 / 14
Job in Progress
Job in Progress
07.11.2014, 8pm
Artists: Christian Hasucha, Ewa Kubiak, Dominik Lejman, Sarah Lüdemann, Piotr Marzol, Fried Rosenstock, Roland Schefferski, Justyna Smidowicz, REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT (Henrik Mayer Martin Keil), Marek Wasilewski
Job in Progress is an exhibition from the Visual Conversations series, which spins around the abstract idea of the artist's 'work' as a philosophical/social/cultural problem. If we consider 'work'
by its definition as an effort supporting our biological survival, then we are not any different than any other of the species, which may mean that the only thing which could define the work as 'human' is the creative process. Artists work, often perceived as 'leisure' in this context may appear as the only 'work' possible.
Exhibition project at UP Gallery brings together artists and students living in Berlin and Poznan, with their specific cultural/generational perspective to this problem, effected by different environments with their perception of the "artist's work".
Show at the UP Gallery unfolds the opportunity for the broader discussion on the basis of talks with invited artists and theoreticians.
Colonial Wound, Solidarity and Eastern Europe
Colonial Wound, Solidarity and Eastern Europe17.10.2014, 7 pm
Discussion with: Karolina Kubik, Kris Łukomski, Tanel Rander
In this year comes the 25th anniversary of the falling of the Berlin Wall.
Maybe it is a good moment to talk about the invisible or if you like not so symbolic present borders between the East and the West. In the time when maps were printed on paper or canvas and hanged in the classrooms, the political borders were any abstraction, they had their materiality, they were often red or pink or black, thiner or dicker, they divided lands like a knife cuts a cake.
Now the political borders are gone from our sight, all lands from the google prospective look more or less the same, there are no divisions between them except the geographical ones, like rivers or mountains.
So were are the borders, are they internalised? Are they visible in the landscape like in the film of Anna Raczyński "On the Road Between Poznan and Swiecko"? Are they economic ones? We know that workers from the Eastern Europe earn less money than their colleagues from the West. Even though some EU enthusiasts claim that there are no borders any more.
It is of course the situation that describes the reality in the EU, outside it, in Europe, in Ukraine there is a war, people are dying in order to define their living space.
Additionally, this topic came quite unexpectedly to us, we will talk about the borders of artistic freedom, what and where can an artist say. In commercial galleries borders of an artistic expression are shaped by the market, in non-profit institutions, that depend on state's financing the freedom of speech has to be confirmed by officials. This decisions have a great influence on the whole project and on the content of what could be "officially" published. How should artists deal with this?
What should happen in art galleries during such situation?
We will discuss this and some other questions during the first discussion in the UP Gallery in Berlin.
10.10.2014, 7 pm
Artists: Marta Bosowska, Karolina Kubik + Tanel Rander, Olga Lewicka, Anna Raczyński, Magda Starska
A borderline is an abstract line on a map, mostly marked with a red colour that traverses to a transparent pink on its edges. At least it was like that when maps were printed on paper or canvas and hang in classrooms. Lands looked like colourful puzzles back then, which shapes varied depending on the present state of power relations, in 1950 Russia was a red Soviet Federation and in 1990 a green democracy, in 1450 Africa was not yet on the map, apart from Egypt, at that time it was all black and in XIX century it was divided into puzzles, like Europe. The polish puzzle was also gone for some time, its place took the blue Reich and the red Federation, then the puzzle was back, it disappeared again and finally its shape became round and it moved to the left, to the West. Of course all of this information is insignificant in a case of Google Maps: in this virtual space the world seems to have no borders and all of the countries are more or less green.
This border can only be sensed in real proximity to other people, by experiencing lives that happen on both sides, but this local particularities escape the universal perspective of Google.
In the psychology the term Borderline has another meaning, here it is often connected with personality. Borderline disorder is marked by instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image and emotions. People affected by this illness have problems to distinguish themselves (I) from others (you). They cannot draw a line between the psychic life and the reality, which is outside, a common space for all living spices.
Borderline is a difference, which is a culture, it allows expression (speech, representation), but also creates conflicts between this, which is identified with "I", and that, which is in consequence described as "other".
The works of artists presented at the exhibition Borderline deal with the outer and inner borders, some of them will stress differences, others will try to delude them by using rationality to point out the other side – the madness.
Text: Zofia Nierodzinska