Dorota Kozieradzka i Michał Szuszkiewicz

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kurator: Krzysztof Żwirblis

otwarcie: 5 marca 2012r. (poniedziałek) godz. 19.00

wystawa do: 8 kwietnia 2012 r.

Estetyczna podróż w głąb Pałacu Kultury, po którym oprowadzają nas artyści. Układ projekcji i fotografii w obu salach galerii przedstawia życie gmachu z jego własnymi obiegami energii i mediów. Zdjęcia pochodzą także z innych przytłaczających rozmiarami i formami architektonicznymi budowli (fortyfikacje, filtry warszawskie, Teatr Wielki). Kontrastują perswazyjną siłę architektury Pałacu świadczącej o rzekomej potędze systemu jego budowniczych z lewicowym marzeniem, którego jest emanacją.

Program Stypendialny MKiDN "MŁODA POLSKA" na rok 2011

GALERIA STUDIO

Teatr Studio im. St. I. Witkiewicza

Plac Defilad 1, 00-901 Warszawa


"The Legend" is esthetic journey through interior of the Palace of Culture and Science, edifice build on the fundament of leftist ideals, that turned into a sign of domination of forced system and forced power. Like with every architectural construction, first what we perceive is form - here reminding one of monumental sacral or sepulchral structures (a pyramid, a ziggurat, a mausoleum), or, looking for more recent examples, American skyscrapers, product of the system Soviets felt obliged to catch with, and leave behind. The Palace had to bespeak about "everlasting" state of workers, where was conceived. Stylistically it was absolute mixture: Roman severity, Italian mannerism, Vitruvius, Palladio, Vignola, everything was here, but the overwhelming sense of might and power was more important that architectural solutions serving simple practical uses. Monumental terraces over porticos were left inaccessible, because the doors would destroy a rhythm of windows. Palace has also its iconographical program expressing the triumph rational order, science, progressive culture international brotherhood, and equality. It was decorated with monumentalized attics inspired by the Polish Renaissance, according to socrealist dogma that every artwork should "socialist in content and national in form", while opening this enormous edifice of the art, the science and the recreation to "the people" was symbolic recompensation for the long centuries of injustices and exploits.
The exhibition is accompanied by a legend written by the artists, which tells about the magic spring hidden in the undergrounds, fulfilling, wishes of the city residents, a source of wellbeing and prosperity, doesn't take care of citizens any longer. According to the tale the Palace is an emanation of dream of some pauper, who discovered the spring and died by it. And the artists take us on tour through this dream, this legend, in a very sublime way, using projections and photographs which present the life of the building, the life going by itself, with own circuits of energy and media, apparently without a need for human presence. Meanings aren't built through quotations from iconography of the Palace, but with the documentation and animation of its mechanics, constructions and interior design: that more practical (rows of chairs at the theatre and more ornamental (candelabra). Shootings were taken also in other Warsaw buildings, overwhelming by their dimensions (fortifications, filter station, Opera House).
Exhibition deals also with locations and movements of bodies which are trained and broken in by the grill aesthetic frame of the building, which doesn't allow for lightness, monumentalizing detail, leading every thought and every gesture in preordained direction in an arbitrary way. Photographs contrast expressive pose of a model with a language of interiors, stillness of ornament, which even today bears traces of its grim, persuasive power. In a case of "chairfied", immobilized model in the film, the blinking is the only symptom of life.
Such symptoms artists find in lasting permanency of the palace's interiors. They also try to define the atmosphere, impact and influence of interiors on their users, creating complex animations. On of them with the Waltz no 2 by Shostakovich, a composition in which we can hear esthetic of music of public gardens played in band shells, or even cheaper, that from carnivals with their merry-go-rounds - gay but finally evoking associations with vanitas and abandonment. It also tells a lot about fate of the artist once highly appreciated, honored then criticized, falling in disfavor, who tries to render in his work deeper meanings hidden behind a façade of official gaiety.
In these films we find also dangerous journeys through underbellies, equally depressing like those depicted in Piranesi's "Carceri", places of doom, ultimate representation of a domination of the regime, and the destination of rebellious individuals.
Such is a journey through yet another monument of human rebellion, an effort to change the life and the world, remake them around quasi religious theory. But as one explores this monument one is constantly reminded that domination built on technological hypertrophies can last.
Lasting seems to be unassuming, invisible source hidden deep underground, which nourishes dreams about more egalitarian world. As if a return to its energy was giving us basis for completely development than what we inherited and reproduce in this architecture, monument confirming and strengthening social relation in the system which gave rise to it.
Krzysztof Żwirblis