Space as a place
09.07- 18.09.2016
Haus am Lützowplatz
artists: Piotr Blajerski. Olaf Brzeski, Krystian Truth Czaplicki, Łukasz Rusznica, Kama Sokolnicka
photo: Marta Madej
The exhibition „Space as a Place“ presents five young artists from Wroclaw. Although the artists work with different media and represent various artistic milieus, they meet together through the subject of the exhibition. Space, a main theme for the show, is seen by the artists from various perspectives. They show how space relates to universal ideals but also touches on individual and personal experiences.
In the exhibition at Studiogalerie, space can be seen as a space, which is defined by walls, floors, ceilings and certain objects belonging into it. This space, secured and easy to describe, is a place we live and work, and in which we exist and circulate. Works by Krystian Truth Czaplicki take familiar, commonplace objects from their everyday surrounding and changes them into art objects. In the process, they lose their useful value but attract more attention by being rediscovered in a space in which they did not originally belong.
Space can also be created by the abstract, from something which is very difficult to follow, as we see in an installation by Olaf Brzeski. Using a metal wire, the artist traces the flight path of a fly as it flies about. The flight of this small but annoying creature gains a solid form, which becomes even more annoying. An illogical shape hangs in the gallery space, disturbing and dynamic, like a dark cloud of our own thoughts.
In the exhibition, a physical place evolves into abstract space, going beyond a material room and becoming a psychic sphere, reaching our thoughts, imagination and dreams. The works on display by Kama Sokolnicka are drawn from several different series. In one, the artist deals with sleep disorders, lending these form through a black tapestry made out of wool. In another work, the artist translates the process of dreaming into the physical form of collages.
As in a dream in Sokolnicka’s collage elements, forms and fragments from different sources and realities together build a puzzle which can be read on many levels. The artist’s dreams are combined with memories from her childhood and the gardening business of her parents. Several of her works show the motif of a cheerful garden and greenhouses, along with a piece of rusty grate, forgotten and then found in her parents’ house.
A space shifting between two realities is created in a video by Piotr Blajerski. The artist places a narration in two realities: the existing world and the inner world of thoughts. Together, these create a dream-like story, where the behaviours of the people appear absurd and irrational.
The in-between space where the psychic and physical unite, is occupied through photographs by Łukasz Rusznica. In a nocturne-like series, the artist tells a story of his home. It is a home made up of contradictions. While it is a place where his parents live, and supposedly close, emotionally, it is also unfamiliar and strange. The artist never had a chance to live in the house. Given this situation, how could he define this space? What does it mean to him and how does he find himself within it?
Paulina Olszewska
The exhibition was prepared in a context of this year of celebration of Wroclaw as a European Capital of Culture and an exchange between two cities: Berlin and Wroclaw.