POLAND/INVASION/POTOP
There are a lot of interesting artists in Poland right now, many of whom which are not presented outside Poland. There are also public debates about the artist’s role in society, the contemporary subjects they choose and what material they work in. Art scandals are frequent. Getting funding is difficult. Politicians and people from the church have a big influence on these discussions, which are very different from those in Sweden and Finland and so is the art criticism.
When we read and discuss the center and periphery in the art world today, the so called Eastern European artists are often put together in a group. As if they belong to the same philosophy and same thinking. This project is not a “Polish Package”, just a possibility to meet interesting artists in several spaces.
EXHIBITIONS IN SWEDEN AND FINLAND
Four Polish artists at different locations will show their work in Sweden, starting June 7th, the same day as the Poles are voting yes or no to EU.
WOJCIK, JANIN, NIEZNALSKA AND BAUMGART
Julita Wojcik, Zuzanna Janin, Dorota Nieznalska and Anna Baumgart are all different artists in what they work with and how they perform it. The most important thing is that they are all very engaged in how to reach out to an audience and the society. Political in a new way.
Julita Wojcik’s work is part of her project “The girl sets out”, her logotype shows the paradox of being both provincial and international at the same time. With a humorous glance into recent Polish art she installs carefully knitted forest-birds and bathing birds inside the gallery space. The simple everyday work of women takes a special part in her work, whereas in other activities she takes the art to the street, park or sea.
The church has an enormous social and political ascendancy over people in Poland. To do as Dorota Nieznalska and use the symbols or meanings of Catholicism in her work is controversial. Another difficult discussion she evokes in her work is the representation of gender, the ideas of both the female and male and how it forms the society. Her work speaks about power structures, violence, fear, love and ecstasy.
Zuzanna Janin shows the video “Fight/IloveYouToo”, an endless boxing match between the artist herself and a professional heavyweight male boxer. There is no winner or loser, more a struggle for being and for seeing one another in a relation. With her codes for this project “Loneliness, Longings and Struggle” the content changes after a while for the viewer. We see a constantly moving poetic image of communication.
Anna Baumgart investigates contradictory human relations in her video “Mother”. Different persons were confronted with the artists and she made a film of the discussions, extended it with commentary and then showed it to her protagonists. When the same person saw herself or himself in these situations this was also filmed and cut into the video. It makes a nuanced map over existential matters and ideas of identity.
RECONNAISSANCE ARTIST
Already during 2002 Dominik Lejman represented Poland at the Rauma Biennal in Finland and at Norrtälje Konsthall in Sweden A scout sent out before the artillery. Today he is artist in residence at Location One in New York.
WHO INVADES WHOM?
The working name “Poland/Invasion” has come to stay for a while, the burden of the
Swedish-Polish history is in the idea of the title. The Swedish war on Poland in the middle of the 17th century was so awful that it even today is called “potop”, The Flood. So far there has been few mutual and equal exchanges between our two countries. The knowledge about our countries is diminutive at both sides and we want to change the notion of one another. As there is a Poland year proclaimed in Sweden we say: Attack or embrace.
Works presented
Dorota Nieznalska
Norrtälje Konsthall, June 7-August 9, 2003
Installations with objects, video, photos and electrical energy
”Absolution”
”Stigmata”
”That is my body”.
Julita Wojcik
Konstakuten, June 7-29, 2003
Installation ”Tits”, sculptures
”Bathhouse”, video document.
Zuzanna Janin
Polska Institutet, June 2003
Video
”I love you too”
“Fight”
“I have seen my death”
Visningar varje tisdag under juni kl 11.00 och 14.00
Polska Institutet
Videoverk
”Cranes are flying”
”Real? (bear)”, 2001
”Brides. Condoms, money, lady – no problem”
“Mother”
“When she kissed the frog”
“Who is talking”
“A collection of epitaphs”
Visningar varje tisdag under juni kl 11.00 och 14.00
Opening/Vernissage/Wernisaz June 7th
En buss kör mellan de olika utställningarna. Föranmälan till de begränsade platserna.
A bus tour takes you between the exhibitions. Please make a reservation for the limited numbers of seats.
Välkommen!/Welcome!/Witamy!
11.00 Opening Polska Institutet. Visning av film, konstnärerna berättar
13.00 Bus leaves for Konstakuten. Buss avgår till Konstakuten
13.30 Opening Konstakuten.Vernissage
15.00 Bus leaves for Norrtälje Konsthall. Buss avgår till Norrtälje Konsthall
16.00 Opening Norrtälje Konsthall. Vernissage och buffé
Polska Institutet
Direktör och kulturattaché Piotr Cegielski
www.polskainstitutet.se
Norrtälje Konsthall
Intendent Daniel Werkmäster
Assistent Helen Thomaeus Hedensjö
www.norrtalje.se/konsthall
Konstakuten
Konstnär Malin Arnell
Grafisk design Josefin Herolf
www.konstakuten.com
Curator
Torun Ekstrand
Reconnaissance artist
Dominik Lejman
Reconnaissance artist, Norrtälje Konsthall/Rauma Biennal 02
Location One, New York, ateljéprogram 02-03.
dlejman@wp.pl, dlejman@yahoo.com
Dominik Lejman
Rauma Biennale Balticum, Rauma Art Museum, Finland
14 June – 15 September 2002
Norrtälje Arthall, Sweden
28 September- 2 November 2002
Vital statistics: videomurals and installation with wallpaper and video.
Dominik Lejman is dealing with the philosophical sides of what it is to be a human being,
his works evokes questions about the unreal in our existence.
Elias Canetti wrote in his Notes that the riddle of life is a social one. No one is on it´s track.
You can only be lonely if you in a distance have people waiting for you and that there is no such thing as absolute loneliness. Dominik Lejman’s latest work with human masses touch
these aspects and is closely allied to poetry.
Flying alienation
Crowds of people flying and skiing, white figures moving or hovering in a silent nothingness.
The first impression of his video projections are free floating and meditation. They seduce you. After a while you discover that the people are caught in a dream where they carry on doing the same thing, never getting contact with one another. The figures are destilled from time and human life, minimized into white movements on a daylight wall. Like an existential vacuum.
People are used to TV images that flickers by and it sometimes gives you a feeling that nothing is for real, like these images suggest. You want to meet, touch other people, be a part of the life of others. At the same time you live in your own world, occupied by daily life and wonder if it is ever possible to fully meet and understand another human being?
Today often the impression of who you are becomes more important than the substance. Narcissos is king. You project yourself on everybody else and get your value in the reflex of others. Who are also obsessed by being seen by others. That is To Be Somebody.
Little spectacles
During 2002 Domink Lejman has worked in a huge project for the children’s department of a Hospital in Warsaw. For Poland a unique way of art for the community. “Art dans la Cité “ also included Hospitals in Madrid, in Paris and in Brussels. His project is called “Little spectacles:”
In narrow corridors, small rooms with uneasy feelings, smells and sounds you can meet magic - if you discover it. You are suddenly surprised by motions in unexpected places. Animals, transferred from the Zoo in Gdansk, meets a new environment. On white glazed tiles, in a corner or on a door they move around on their own. Are they for real or are they a product of your imagination?
Reconnaissance artist
Dominik Lejman in sent out in beforehand as a Reconnaissance artist for Poland Invasion.
A project under construction with the name Poland/Invasion, a name that has come to stay for a while because of the past history between Sweden and Poland and some part because of the aggression Robert Rumas, Dorota Nieznalska and Julita Wojcik seem to arise in Poland.
Having Dominik Lejman´s Stealth painting in mind and his exhibitions in both Sweden and Finland, he was the perfect spy and scout sent out before the artillery…We can hear him talk about The “Luxury of Survival”.
The safety of an airbag
”Cocooning” was a subject of discussion in Sweden in the eighties. How to live in a tough world, sneak into your home and make it cosy and forget about everything outside. In Dominik Lejmans paintings with video projections on you can see it as one way of surviving. To create and endure your own uneasy safety. An escape back into the womb and the feeling of somebody protecting you and living for your best being. At the same time you get the idea about being old, soon dead, embryo and death or forever life in a perpetual orbit.
In his work there are vague contrasts between inside-outside, surface–space, private-public.
You often come to interact with your moves as a viewer. The person in the picture can turn his or her back to you, but still somehow you stand there in front of them. Observing. Imposing into something secret. The works has three layers and you see your reflections both literary and in a figurative sense.
Some works reminds you of or are have the title Airbag. They breathe slowly, almost invisible. An airbag can save your life. But it can also take it. Sometimes his works make you want to look behind your back. Scary, yes. Being very close to someone and still not. Was it my breath or another person? Entrapment and security at the same time. Then it’s time to remember, it is a luxury to live.
Recommended Reading
Read more about the loneliness of the crowd in Don de Lillo´s book “MAO II” from 1990.
It takes the reader above who we are supposed to be, talks about vital necessities, the dream of belonging to the crowd and the conditions for a modern hermit.
Elias Canetti, Notes.
The catalogue “The Luxury of Survival”/”Luksus Przetrwania” on Dominik Lejmans work.
Produced by Zamek Ujazdowski, Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw. http://www.csw.art.pl
Biennale Balticum 02 – Basic Elements, Rauma Art Museum, exhibition catalogue.
