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„The
Fall” was a site-specific, ephemeral installation, formed out of
wood and cardboard, which after one and half months of beeing
exhibited, was dismantled and sent to the abyss. The installation was
made specially for the second exhibition at Museum of Modern Art in
Warsaw. The
institution just started to function in the former office
spaces
of „Emilia” furniture shop. The exhibition was titled
„Ain't
No Sorry” and
was „conceived and prepared during a seminar
held
at the Curatorial Studies at the Jagiellonian University in
Krakow”. It
was more than 12 years ago that this exhibition happened. Its idea
was to present the youngest generation of „emerging” artists.
Since
it took place in the newly opened Museum of Modern Art in
Warsaw,
it gave the opportunity for the career to flourish, either
for
the young curators or the artists. So the tension was high.
And
the decision of what to show, from my perspective, was preety
stressfull.
Not
following the wishes of the curators, I decided to present the
new
site-specific piece. It was a huge sculpture/installation made
of
cardboard covered with black paint and suspended in the air
with
the help of fishing line. The shape resembled human body,
that
is cut into half. The upper part (head, hands, and torso)
is situted
in the building (the institution) and the bottom part
(the legs)
is leaning on the outer glass wall of the museum building,
and
is subjected to meteorological influences.

My
idea was simple. I was representing a situation in which the
body
(of young artist) is situated partly in the institution and
partly
outside. While the indoor part keeps the body secure, the
other
part erodes through time. Gradually, the parts separate from
each
other. Two halves cannot stay the same.
The
installation represents a situation in which the body
accidently
falls into the institution, yet it is stopped and
suspended
by magical anti-gravity force. You might fall because
you
haven't seen the obstacle, or you might fall into oblivion,
you
can fail to be recognized and accepted by the institutional
structure
or the art-world system at large.



Looking
from the perspective of the exhibition space, both inside
and
outside, the geometric shape referred to the architectural
structure
of the building. The object itself was a physical
obstacle
for viewers - to see another part of the exhibition, you
had
to crawl under or walk tight against the wall - and a visual
as
well, since it was not possible to look at the long exhibition
space.
Only from the first floor of the “Emilia” furniture store
was
the installation recognized as a human figure.
At that moment the
space of „Emilia” furniture store
was not yet a part of exhibition
spaces of the Museum.
In 2017 the building was demolished by a developer.

I
don't know if it was because of no positive feedback about this
piece
or an opinion of the director of the Museum that the
sculpture
is ugly, that I felt I failed and did something bad.
After
returning from Warsaw to Katowice (where I had been living
at
that moment) I was sad about this failure and I created the
„First
Song About Triangles”.
In this
videoperformance I am trying to
play on the instrument dressed with a geometrical costume made of
cardboard. I am not fully in charge of the sounds I produce.
The
costume – protesis – influences, determines the music.
When
you are grounded by your parents, because you did something
bad,
hidden in your private room you still might have a chance to
redeem
yourself and create something beautifull.
Today
I also feel remorse over the materials used in my artistic
practice
and which have been abandoned. I am wondering what
happened
to the cardboard and sticks that „The Fall” installation
was
made of. I imagine that those materials are on some waste
area,
without context beeing just part of layers of rubish that
humans
created and left. Yet the materials remember the good times
when
they were subjected to cultural context, and for feew weeks
were
part of some coherent body of meaning. I feel sad for them.
I would
like to find those materials, dig them out from the
obscurity,
and say : „I am sorry. Let's be friends again, and
let's
do together something important!”
But
maybe they feel ok, beeing somewhere beyond the border of art
and
life, nature and culture, subjected by erosion into new forms
of
soil or beeing just a garbage.

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