2016 NEWSPAPER WINTER

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NEWSPAPER | WINTER | 2016
ŻAK | BRANICKA | Lindenstr. 35 | 10969 Berlin | www.zak-branicka.com | phone: +49 30 611 073 75
ŻAK | BRANICKA ART FAIRS
ARCO
HALL: 9C10
Av. Del Partenón, 5, 28042 Madrid
24/02/16–28/02/16
GALLERY WEEKEND BERLIN
ŻAK | BRANICKA
Lindenstr. 35, 10969 Berlin
29/04/16–01/05/16
GALLERY WEEKEND BERLIN
FSK - KINO
Segitzdamm 2, 10969 Berlin
29/04/16–01/05/16
Artists:
KWIEKULIK
SZYMON KOBYLARZ
Artists:
KWIEKULIK
Artists:
KWIEKULIK
FEATURING INSIDE FOUR PAGES
ŻAK | BRANICKA EDITIONS
SZYMON KOBYLARZ, THE ARTIST/MATHEMATICIAN
A
licja Jodko: You’re showing a few
wooden objects and drawings pertaining to them at Entropia Gallery, as well as
a projection, and a site specific drawing/
mural, which is the largest piece in the exhibition, but which nonetheless could go unnoticed. Let us begin, perhaps, with what is
most visible: a couple of objects whose material seems to exude warmth. They remind
us of the work of a cooper, a boat or model
builder. Their surfaces are imperfect, various parts are not identical, yet they still legibly illustrate scientific laws. One of their
titles recalls mathematics…
Szymon Kobylarz: Yes, GROWTH is
a work that is meant to spread outward, to
change in terms of quality and quantity.
What we see here is only the beginning.
AJ: We’re happy to have this exciting work
begin at Entropia… At any rate, this kind of
work could only get underway here…
SK: Yes, the work will grow, expand, because scale is a remarkably important aspect of the construction. It will also change
in terms of color, because the new parts will
have different shades, new ones, and brighter ones for a time, mainly as a result of using different sorts of wood, and the specifics of the material as such. The tube or cone
that we see is meant to become a colossus,
as you can see in the drawing depicting the
project in the public space of the park. A
work with a similar premise, also begun at
Entropia, is a spiral that is currently untitled.
AJ: Perhaps because I work in philosophy,
I find your pieces show a clear trace of the
idea shaped by the human hand, the idea of
mathematics demonstrated or made incarnate. There have been many philosophical
concepts based on the premise of the mathematical or numerical nature of reality, from
Pythagoras to the present. Johannes Kepler
once said that “God is a mathematician.” Is
it now the artists’ turn?
SK: For some time I’ve been interested in
issues tied to the exact sciences and how
they are processed, tested, and interpreted
by people who are remote from the sciences.
AJ: The title of the work alone – 34/55 –
seems to suggest a link with mathematics.
SK: That’s the joint title of several pieces:
a projection, drawing, and two objects that
allude to the inflorescence of the sunflower.
The title is closely linked to the construction of the plant. The face of the sunflower
has two spiral lines radiating from the center, while the digits of the spirals growing
clockwise and turned in the opposite direction is the order of numbers in the Fibonacci
Sequence. In the case of my Sunflower there
are 34 and 55.
AJ: The illuminated projection of the sunflowers’ faces has an aberration of some
sort. The shapes are fuzzy, the colors blur.
Might it be seen as a 3D projection?
SK: I was less after spatiality than luminescence, a simulation of neon light. I began
experimenting with shifts, and above all,
with focus. This blurry version is more luminous, and the spiral parts are better visible. It pertains more clearly to the design of
the sculpture in the public space, which will
be made of neon tubes.
AJ: The version with the aberration is intriguing to both the eye and the intellect.
The same goes for the nature of the sunflower itself, which is, after all, a plant that
“follows the sun”; its inflorescence recalls
a sundial, and always turns toward the sun.
Why were you interested in the Fibonacci
Sequence?
SK: Probably because it is relatively easy to
imagine, it sparks the imagination. It should
be known that the Fibonacci Sequence is
connected with mathematics, but perhaps
even more strongly with biology. It is not
entirely known whether this sequence was
invented (or rather, discovered) by Fibonacci; if it was a pure mathematical structure
which was later found to reflect biologi-
Szymon Kobylarz Fibonacci Chaos, exhibition view at ŻAK | BRANICKA, 2016; photo: Marcus Schneider
cal structures, or if it was abstracted out of
them. I began to be interested in mathematics only recently, I had not paid much attention to the subject before, and now I am trying to understand it. I began with an attempt
to transfer the Fibonacci Sequence to the
most basic digitally-generated fractal. Thus
emerged the tree-shaped sculpture.
AJ: The Fibonacci Sequence is over 800
years old. Many see it as a law that describes the structure of the world. It can be
seen in shells, flowers, animal horns, galactic shapes…
We also find it in the “golden ratio,”
although this proportion had been previously described by Euclid.
SK: Yes, this sequence continues to fascinate, it has vast and growing numbers
of ties to reality, applied in various fields.
Every computer programmer knows it. It is
somehow universal, very easy to explain,
and yet very complex, much like the search
for those dependencies and proportions in
nature which it mathematically reflects. It is
incredible that many of these relationships
can be intuitively discovered. The manic
search for the Fibonacci Sequence in every
possible relationship in the world is also
interesting – it shows it can be regarded as
a sort of “theory of everything.”
AJ: Consciously or not, artists and builders have made use of the “golden ratio” for
many centuries, at least since the Pyramid
of Cheops. At present it is popular in music and highly appreciated (if not overrated)
in the field of design. When we see various
examples of graphic art based on the Fibonacci Sequence and similar principles, one
might get the rather sickening sensation that
nature itself resembles a 3D simulation, that
its structure is a reflection of slick computer
designs. I get the impression that you are
going in the opposite direction. What I particularly appreciate in your work is how you
use natural materials, as well as refuse, and
hand-shape them according to certain principles of construction, proportion, crease…
The mark of manual work and material
that shows signs of wear — natural, unsophisticated — lets you combine the laws
of mathematics and the everyday reality
that surrounds us, or nature, albeit crooked,
defective, splintered and chipped. Is there
some environmental thinking behind this?
SK: In the work shown at the exhibition
I used waste material and what I found lying around the studio. I’m an old hand at
that sort of thing. Recycling and processing
have been present in my work from practically the very beginning, ever since my
studies. I find the form of recycling pleasant
and a bit naive, but I would not like to give
it an ideological basis (it has no ideological significance for me). It is also interesting
to me that in art you can give old materials
new forms, that one form turns into another.
I work with various materials, but I particularly like working with wood. Primarily this
is because of the fact that wood changes –
even if it is treated, it changes in character
after a few years. But I do not normally treat
wood, because I like the transformation process, and above all, the changeability of the
material.
AJ: In the few introductory sentences to the
exhibition you wrote something very significant and beautiful. You said that in making your sculpture — the fractal tree — you
used refused materials, which had an impact
on the imperfection of the form, but that this
imperfection is something like the wind for
a branch of a real tree.
SK: Yes, that was perhaps the first poetic
statement I’ve ever made…
AJ: I think it is not only poetic, but also significant for all of your art, and central to an
understanding of what it is you do. I am no
fan of design, because it seems it often boils
down to a blind striving toward the ideal
form, which ultimately turns out to be artificial and forced by individualism in many
ways. Of course, this forced aspect occurs
in circles who are aware of the rules, functions, traditions, trends etc., but its result
is meant to be the mark of personal comme il faut. Partly through the material you
use, your work shows the opposite way of
thinking. It seems this path is rerum natura,
keeping all the imperfections, glitches, and
errors.
SK: Yes, because I am interested in the clash
between two worlds — ideal precision and
real imperfection. For some time I have also
been taken with repetition and self-resemblance. You’ve picked up on a very interesting issue, one which concerns my creative
path. I could say that I was a designer for
a longer period of time, because I hid the
places that resulted from error. Previously,
back during my studies, the capacity and desire to make use of accident repelled me. It
took some time before I began to admit that
certain things can emerge from errors. The
tree was my first piece where I freed myself
from those limitations. The Sunflower, or
34/55, is really something in between. On
the one hand, all the parts of that project
are linked to some kind of error, chance, or
imperfection, but on the other hand, the final execution of this project won’t even be
done by me. It’s going to be a large-scale
project (around 2x2x3 m) made of glowing
neon tubes. The question is: Will it even
work out? The models we see at the exhibition I made with my own hands, out of
bamboo sticks and cardboard faces. In one I
tried to twist the face about ninety degrees.
With neon tubes that kind of literal twisting
is rather out of the question…
AJ: But I thought you were moving toward
a low-entropy sort of art, using only basic
resources, the kinds that are at the opposite pole to the pyramid. I do understand,
however, that fractal self-resemblances can
be made legible only through changing the
scale.
SK: Right, in the most recent projects I have
to think in terms of large scale, because that
is their constructive element. But what you
are speaking of is increasingly important to
me and I feel increasingly distant from work
that shows no trace of the human hand.
AJ: I am struck by another thing that is demonstrated in your objects: the mathematical
laws concern not only nameless and objective technical, biological, or geological
processes, but also the actions of people, of
individuals, taken down to a smaller scale…
Two works at this exhibition — the spiral
and the tube — begin as a tiny, pointed tip
with a height of one millimeter, but in the
following modules developing the principle
of the sequence they grow exponentially…
In one of the drawings in turn, which serve
as “aids” in this exhibition, you show one of
the works — GROWTH — against a landscape. At the two ends of the now significantly enlarged tube we see two identical
figures which give us a sense of its size. To
this day I have only seen two human mea-
2
WINTER | 2016
SZYMON KOBYLARZ
surements in those figures. Now they also
give me the impression of being invented.
The subject of the Fibonacci Sequence
prompts us to pose a few major questions.
It is true that in our times this question may
have lost its currency, or perhaps it makes
no sense, but I would like to ask you anyway: Are you an idealist or a materialist?
SK: My wife says I’m an idealist, and I say
that I’m not sure. I don’t know how to respond to such existential questions. I prefer
to stand in the center and to avoid responding. I think it’s better to avoid black-andwhite distinctions. The moment will surely
come when it will be possible to look at the
same oppositions from a distance. When
it comes to reality, I prefer to treat it as an
enormously complicated thing which has
its principles. Fractal geometry, much like
the Fibonacci Sequence, is simple, but has a
vast quantity of complications and possible
solutions. I think that this is basically the
nature of reality.
AJ: And this exhibition oscillates around
such a view of nature. Is this new in your
work?
SK: This exhibition is like a “work in progress,” because most of the things I am showing are something like a germ, a teaser for
something that’s just developing and will
continue to do so.
The mural, on the other hand, was meant
to be the only ready-made and finished
work at the exhibition, though — against
all appearances — it also develops. The
drawing on the gallery wall is also fractal
and thus it is the same work I did building the tree, which we won’t be showing
here. Meanwhile, the tree is a spatial object, a sculpture. The material of both these
works is also a bit different. The fractal
we see at Entropia was designed from one
module in a program for creating fractals,
then repeated until an enormous module
was created, which was in turn multiplied
four times so that the scale corresponded
to the dimensions of the wall. Incidentally,
in terms of size this work is the largest one
I’ve ever done.
AJ: You have created a very unsettling
work, one which is almost invisible even
from up close. When one makes out the first
line, a moment later one picks up a whole
network of discreet cracks that look very
convincing, even dangerous. It is good this
is no more than a simulation. And did this
come about by chance?
SK: Yes, though it is hard to say what we
mean by “chance.”
AJ: This is just how we can define chance…
It is what we do not understand… That wall
drawing immediately brings to mind your
early works, ones you made back during
your studies.
SK: The form of the work, an illusion-based
piece that suggests the destruction of a surface, is reminiscent of what I did as a stu-
KWIEKULIK BY KAREN ARCHEY
L
ove, art, science and politics“ Artist
duo KwieKulik used their everyday
lives in communist Poland of the 70s and
80s as material, documenting it in meticulous detail. They made no distinction
between art and life, and their ephemeral,
process-oriented works and Actions were
built on the idea that art could be a foundation for a new and better world. The microinstitution PDDiU, based in the couple’s
apartment, was a platform and documetation center for the unofficial art scene of
socialist Poland.
When was the last time the art world galvanized into wide-spread self-organization
by a single cause? The short-lived, and
arguably ultimately divisive efforts oft
he Occupy Movement? Or as far back as
the AIDS crisis oft he 80s and 90s? Does
it take a political and social calamity for
us, as artists and thinkers, to put aside the
distractions of the everyday to attempt effectuate change in our daily lives? How
we make sense of and challenge the variably imperceptible or daunting sociopolitical forces in both theory and practice - to
blend politics and art with life – has been a
lasting topic of artistic inquiry.
Yet KwieKulik, over its 16-year span as
an artistic and personal partnership, developed an idiosyncratic working method
that melded artistic documetation, gallery
administration, performance, mathematics, and praxeology (the study of human
conduct), that 25 years later seems a winning, if unusual, amalgam. At the core of
KwieKulik’s practice was a deep resistance to Soviet totalitarian communism
and a commitment to the fundamental
values of democratic socialism, including self-organization and the solidarity of
public life. The duo felt it incumbent upon
them to shed light on the living conditions
under the People’s Republic of Poland –
even going as far as to use their infant son
as a staple in their work. (It should be mentioned that KwieKulik probably wouldn’t
differentiate between a mound of clay and
a human as art material. Even more radical
than a Beuysian notion of Social Sculpture,
everything was art to them.) Yet, while
looking back at a couple who brazenly
lived their art and politics and whose working and personal relationship disintegrated
in unison (and just before communism in
Eastern Europe dissolved), let us ask: Well,
firstly, was it all worth it? And secondly,
how, in contemporary society, can we similarly meld politics with art, and art with
daily life?
Zofia Kulik (*1947) and Przemysław
Kwiek (*1945) met while studying at the
Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts under professors Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz and Oskar
Hansen. Hansen, a Finnish-born architect,
urban planner, and theorist, propagated the
theory of Open Form, the somewhat uto-
Szymon Kobylarz, Untitled (Fib.1-8), 2015, wooden object, 35 × 30 × 50 cm
dent. But different things brought me to this
work. Back then I was interested in changing my approach to drawing as such. The
“dirty spots” and “leaks” on the walls were
not the slightest bit legible or taken as drawings. In that sense they were invisible, and
that’s what I called that series.
AJ: But those works were not at all based
on fractals?
SK: No, not in any respect.
interviewed by Alicja Jodko
First published in Magazyn Szum, 2015
pian idea that art and architecture should
shape the collectively shared cognitive
space of society vis-à-vis human activity.
Art and architecture were thus responsible
for responding to the needs of society.
Open Form provided an intellectual backdrop for the forthcoming period of the radically inventive Soc Art (also sometimes
referred to as Socialist Conceptualism) in
70s Poland. Because Open Form called for
artists to be in tune with the public, many
so-called Actions (which would loosely be
thought of as interactive performances or
sometimes games) took on the structure of
a call-and-response, locating responsibility
also within the “audience”, and creating a
context for response or a feedback loop between parties.
The Group Action Game on Morel’s
Hill (1971) used such a structure, pitting
against each other two groups of Hansen’s sculpture students. It should be noted
tion, Kulik assumed the task of preserving
the PDDiU, and had the perspicacity to realize that she who controls the archive controls both history and the future by way of
reanimating and recontextualizing the past.
This impulse to survey and to archive isn’t
foreign to the erstwhile technocratic policies of the People’s Republic of Poland,
and certainly not unlike the insidious data-
uncompromising inquiry into the quotidian,
rather than the ever-popular lofty and macro, delivers us the self-actualization needed
to power through the forces that cloud the
everyday.
Karen Archey
First published in Spike Art Quarterly,
Issue 38, Vienna/Berlin 2013
KwieKulik, Activities with Dobromierz, 1972-74, photography, 236 × 300× 270 cm
that this is an early work associated with
KwieKulik but “authored” in multiplicity. To quote Zofia Kulik, “We believed in
the possibility of smooth cooperation with
other artists, in the possibility of collective
work, free from the problem of authorship, from worries over ‘what is whose’
and ‘who did what’. An artist should be
free and unselfish, and the ‘new’ should be
generated at the meeting point of me-andothers, in interaction”. While on a field trip
in December 1971, the two groups of students played out a pre-existing discussion
en plein air, displacing words with a given
set of art materials – a bolt of white canvas, 1.5 meter long poles, red fabric. The
first team hammered a series of wooden
poles into the ground, visually accenting
the hill’s contours, and the second team
aurally responded by approaching them uttering a series of “shhh” sounds, while one
errant member walked to a nearby church
reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Such was the
kind of strange, abstract nature of Hansen’s treatment of Open Form. And while
this performance may be difficult to conceptually parse, we can take this call-andresponse model to, at least in part, speak
to the responsibility we bear to each other
as humans, and the lack of responsibility
taken by the People’s Republic of Poland
to protect the wellbeing of its inhabitants.
We again see the color red in the aptly titled
Variants of Red (1971), a compendium of
slides documenting the work of KwieKulik
and others whenever the incarnadine color
was present. This project evinces KwieKulik’s obsessive relationship to documenting their own and others’ work, mostly in
the form of slides, which would then be
stored in an archive known as the Bank of
Aesthetic Time-Effects and could be used
later as elements in Expanded Cinema performances. In 1974, KwieKulik titled the
archive in their home the Studio of Activities, Documentation and Propagation (PDDiU) (1974-1986), their small apartment
now functioning as studio and gallery, archive and domestic environment, funded
solely through state commissions for craftbased work. After KwieKulik’s dissolu-
mining activities of certain governments
and corporations today.
Due to KwieKulik’s social rejection from
both state-sanctioned artists and the Polish
neo-avant garde (their work about world
famine wasn’t sexy or voguish enough for
the high-minded conceptualists) and the
birth of perhaps their greatest invention,
their son Maksymilian Dobromierz, the duo
began largely working indoors circa 1972.
The birth of the couple’s son catalyzed their
best-known project, Activities with Dobromierz (1972-74), a series of almost 900
photographs capturing the toddler in his first
two years of life, placed in meticulously arranged constellations of banal objects in the
couple’s home. Demonstrating KwieKulik’s
interest in bridging logic and mathematics
with ontology, these methodically placed
arrangements represent various mathematical-logical functions: specifically, an event
that could happen to X (in this case Dobromierz), an event that might happen to X, and
an event that most likely will not happen to
X. In juxtaposition to the works’s highly cerebral conceptual apparatus is the visceral
and at times alarming nature of these images – we see the toddler plunked in a cardboard box in a cramped bedroom, surrounded by circles of onions arranged on the floor
while a swath of red fabric (again) serves
as a backdrop; Dobromierz floating mid-air
after being tossed by Kwiek; the baby’s carriage left near some roadside bushes; or a
sheathe of fabric enveloping Dobromierz,
only months old, with a water kettle nestled
against his face. Here, Dobromierz represents the common man in multiple possible
conditions that he doesn’t control, or rather,
the lack of agency one had living under
the People’s Republic of Poland. Yet, on a
brighter note, Dobromierz also represented
the newness and inauguration of life, rife
with potential, and the possibility of action
and evolution.
But our question remains: How should we
live, and more importantly, how do we take
responsibility for our community? Through
art? Politics? If we look to KwieKulik, we’ll
see a minute study of the causes, effects,
and realities endemic to their daily life. This
AGNIESZKA POLSKA
IN AMSTERDAM
As an artist in residency for the past two
years at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam,
Agnieszka Polska participated RijkskademieOPEN 2015 with a new work titled
Bearer of Bad News. In her presentation
in Amsterdam, she continued using technological tools in order to address the role
of human language in a post-human reality. If up to this point her work separated
voice from speaker, giving the first a much
stronger presence, for Bearer of Bad News
she takes another step in this direction,
turning the body into nothing but a foggy
shadow moving in a blank void, disembodied from a voice that in its turn is very clear
and present.
Simultaneously, collector Angelique Crouwel, offered a breakfast and opened the
doors to her private flat to show various
works of Agnieszka, including the photocollages and videos shown earlier this
year at ŻAK | BRANICKA during Gallery
Weekend, among others.
Furthermore, in the past 9 December
2015, Polska gave a “performative talk”
at MoMA in New York, titled , where she
took the video Future Days as a point of
departure in a discussion of the mechanisms of legitimization and exclusion in
language, consciousness and art history.
Location A (Angelique Crouwel-Kroon)
and Open Studios of Rijksakademie
Next pages: (3-6)
KwieKulik, To Vomit One’s Way Through Life–Mail Art,
1979, photogram, 9 × 13 cm
Natalia Stachon, VACUUM OF SILENT PANIC (Inspired
by WIlliam S. Burroughs), 2015, aluminum, rubber,
nail, 35 × 50 cm
Agnieszka Polska, All the Rage, 2012, poster, c-print,
70 × 50 cm
Zofia Kulik, Motif 1, 2014, c-print, 24 × 31 cm
WINTER | 2016
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JOANNA RAJKOWSKA PAINKILLERS
l
’étrangère is delighted to announce Painkillers, which brings into conversation new
and existing sculptural works by the Polish
artist, Joanna Rajkowska. Noted for her ambitious interventions in public space, as well
as her objects, films, photography, installations and ephemeral actions, Rajkowska’s
practice interrogates individual and collective bodies as politicised sites of historical,
ideological and psychological conflict. For
her inaugural exhibition at l’étrangère, Rajkowska unites two object-based series under
the rubric, Painkillers, in order to explore the
at times uncomfortable connections between
modern warfare, healing systems and the
practices of Western science.
At the centre of these troubling relationships
is a new series produced especially for the
exhibition. Painkillers II (2015) continues
Rajkowska’s on-going interest in the paradoxical interrelation of military weapons and
pharmaceuticals, whereby the artist makes
casts from modern weapons and ‘weaponised’ objects out of resin and powdered analgesics. Through extended research into case
7
YANE CALOVSKI & HRISTINA IVANOSKA
studies involving medicinal manufacturers
in the facilitation of biological weaponry,
Rajkowska confronts a set of disturbing and
historically-obscured (mis)uses of scientific
knowledge and power.
From the clinical suggestiveness of a pair of
latex gloves to the seductive modernist design of a nuclear bomb, Rajkowska’s choice
of objects is not limited by time, place, or the
method of pain administration. What unites
these spectral forms is their disturbing conflation of death and healing processes. As
the artist comments, ‘it seems that means of
killing and means of saving peoples’ lives are
related to each other in terms of the forces
generating them. This closeness can probably also be found between the means of inflicting pain and relieving it’.
In the back gallery we stumble upon a quieter
object: a multi-chambered crystal formation
resting precariously on a wooden palette.
This mobile chakra was found by Rajkowska
in Brazil and was initially installed in the
public space outside Erdington Library, Birmingham, as a site to subtly affect human
bodies, suspend logic and introduce new social rituals. Now unearthed from its original
home and hidden within the enclosed space
of the gallery, the spiritual promise embedded within the work’s title – Soon Everything
Will Change (2014) – is rendered redundant
within the deathly context of the exhibition.
In its first location, Rajkowska twisted the
definition of chakra from being a spiritual
centre in the human body to a point of high
energy in the organism of the city. Here, by
contrasting the crystal’s inconceivable history with the fragility of the human body and
the instantaneity of its death that is implied
by Painkillers II, she returns this object to its
native meaning, simultaneously unifying and
futile in its non-human temporality.
Text from the press release accompanying
the exhibition ”Painkillers”
l’étrangère, London
September 17 – October 24, 2015
Yane Calovski & Hristina Ivanoska, Oneness (Panel 2), 2016, goldwork and graphite on linen, 100 × 60 cm
Ż
Joanna Rajkowska, Painkillers, exhibition view at l’étrangère, London, 2015
AK | BRANICKA exhibition follows as
a continuation of artists ongoing interest
in how modernity shapes our cultural and
political reading of the present. The exhibition features a series of new collaborative
and individual works, including their most
recent series Oneness made on hand-woven
linen fabric featuring text and symbols inspired by a conceptual text by Ad Reinhard
and a graphic design by Bridget Riley.
They have been interested in the use and
history of linen as a material and in techniques of aesthetization. These processes
move between their individual practices and
merge in their collaborative work. Using
handmade linen and some of the techniques
of embroidery that are mostly done in isolation and solitude, the artists are also trying
to emphasize the dualities of the private and
public, spoken and unspoken, written and
vocal that generate various forms of resistance in different cultures.
The artist statements are as follows:
Hristina Ivanoska: “In a set of four ceramic plates I engraved four short statements
that were taken from the text “The gesture
of writing” by Vilém Flusser. The process
of writing, the form of expressing ideas
NATALIA STACHON, OF NEARNESS TO HER SUNDERED THINGS
T
he Soul has special times –
When Dimness – looks the Oddity –
Distinctness – easy – seems –
(Emily Dickinson, 1862)
But I am not one in space I am one in time—
Metal time—Radioactive time—So of course
I tried to keep
you all out of space—
That is the end of time—
(William S. Burroughs, 1964)
Ambivalences, dynamic, alterable and multifaceted spaces of sensation in literature always fascinates Natalia Stachon. Especially
when they speak of the inability of language
to grasp what it is trying to describe. For her,
they possess the ability to open new rooms.
Inspired by the encounter with the writings of
William S. Burroughs und Emily Dickinson,
Stachon continues this engagement with the
works shown in the exhibition entitled Omitted Center:
“When reading texts by Burroughs, it often
seems to me as if I were able to understand
a foreign language. The endless superimposition of fragments makes it seem as if everything intertwines and suddenly makes sense.
Like a film exposed a thousand times over,
for one unrepeatable moment this literature
contains everything that is current and significant. Susan Sontag once wrote that Burroughs’ language is based on the “freedom
of dreaming,” inextricably interweaving time
and space. For me, this also applies to Emily
Dickinson’s poetry, which only ever circles
around the supposedly obvious, without ever
naming it directly. The American film and
literature scholar Jay Leyda coined the term
“omitted center” for this principle. Through
allusions, elisions, references, parallels, and
reflections, Emily Dickinson weaves a dense
net in her poetry whose nature we can only
encounter in the in-between, in movement
and approximation. Thus, meaning presents
itself as something fleeting, and something
incredibly precious. In the writing of these
two authors, there is for me a connecting element: it is keeping a secret as a value. Appreciating mystery as a possible foundation of
creativity. “ (Natalia Stachon, 2015)
At the center is a video installation. The film’s
motif is a group of young men, assembled in
a strict formation, balancing a heavy wooden
construction on their shoulders. They move
slowly through a large hall, exploring step
by step the surrounding space in a choreographed movement. This mysterious gathering seems like a separated fragment looking
for a connection, or like the last remnants of
an enigmatic ritual or dance. This works explores the term “circumference,” which was
highly significant for Emily Dickinson: “my
business is circumference,” she wrote in 1862
in a letter. The Latin root of the term goes
back to “surrounding” and “carrying around”.
Dickinson, however, used it to “illustrate poetic activity as movement: circling as an approach to something mysterious.”
In the show, the video installation is contrasted with new sculptural works that are based
on Stachon’s engagement with texts by Burroughs.
Text from the press release accompanying
the exhibition “Omitted Center”
Loock Galerie, Berlin,
November 06, 2015–February 20, 2016
Natalia Stachon, Omitted Center, exhibition view at Loock Galerie, Berlin, 2015; photo: Bernd Borchardt
through words and letters and finally presenting the text as a visual work become
very important in my recent artistic practice. This particular text focuses on the performativity of writing, on its history and on
the need of expressing one’s own ideas only
through writing.”
Yane Calovski: “I am interested in the engagement with archives, in creating new
documents and in using various drawing
and writing techniques to achieve certain results. I analyze my connection to historical
temporality, juxtaposing my writing with
found sources, editing and processing information that seems both, accessible yet very
private. I type, draw and sculpt out of my
discoveries in the hope that they will engage
the imagination of the viewer in ways that
are not overly scripted.”
Together with the opening we will be presenting the publication created for the 56th
Venice Biennale project for the Macedonian
Pavilion titled We are all in this alone, curated by Başak Şenova.
“Orphans of Culture, Legends and Heroes Part II”
press release, ŻAK | BRANICKA, Berlin
January 16 – March 05, 2016
ARTISTS EXHIBITIONS
WINTER | 2016
AT ŻAK | BRANICKA GALLERY, BERLIN:
SZYMON KOBYLARZ, Fibonacci Chaos, Nov 14, 2015 – Jan 09, 2016
HRISTINA IVANOSKA & YANE CALOVSKI, Orphans of Culture, Legends and Heroes, Part II, Jan 16, 2016 – Mar 05, 2016
YANE CALOVSKI
& HRISTINA IVANOSKA
Rainbow in the dark
(group show)
Malmö Konstmuseum
Malmö, SWE
Oct 17, 2015 – Jan 2016
YANE CALOVSKI
Passion (group show)
Kunsthaus Nürnberg
Nürnberg, DE
Dec 17, 2015 – Feb 14, 2016
HUBERT CZEREPOK
Broadening of the Struggle’s
Domain (group show)
Miejski Ośrodek Sztuki
Gorzów Wielkopolski, PL
From Oct 3, 2015
----------Passion (group show)
Kunsthaus Nürnberg
Nürnberg, DE
Dec 17, 2015 – Feb 14, 2016
VALIE EXPORT
Jonny (group show)
insitu
Berlin, DE
Oct 23 – Dec 19, 2015
----------Feminismen (group show)
Nordstern Videokunstzentrum
Gelsenkirchen, DE
Mar 28 – Dec 20, 2015
----------Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe
and Latin America, 1960–1980
(group show)
MoMA, The Museum Of Modern Art
New York, US
Sep 5, 2015 – Jan 3, 2016
----------Maurizio Nannucci. Top Hundred
(group show)
Museion
Bozen, IT
Sep 18, 2015 – Jan 7, 2016
----------Collecting for Tomorrow: New Works
at Museion (group show)
Museion
Bozen, IT
Mar 21, 2015 – Jan 10, 2016
----------The Botticelli Renaissance (group
show)
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen
zu Berlin
Berlin, DE
Sep 24, 2015 – Jan 24, 2016
----------Le Souffleur (group show)
Ludwig Forum Aachen
Aachen, DE
Mar 22, 2015 – Jan 31, 2016
----------Punk. Its Traces in Contemporary Art
(group show)
ARTIUM – Basque Museum Center
of Contemporary Art
Vitoria-Gasteiz, ESP
Oct 23, 2015 – Jan 31, 2016
----------What We Call Love (group show)
Irish Museum of Modern Art
Dublin, IRL
Sep 12, 2015 – Feb 7, 2016
----------Remember Lidice (group show)
Edition Block
Berlin, DE
Sep 12, 2015 – Feb 13, 2016
----------Botticelli Reimagined (group show)
Victoria and Albert Museum
London, UK
Mar 5 – Jul 3, 2016
VLATKA HORVAT
Vlatka Horvat (solo show)
Threewalls Gallery
Chicago, USA
Opening 29 Jan, 2016
Vlatka Horvat
(solo show)
CAPRI , Düsseldorf, DE
Opening 11 Mar, 2016
----------Vlatka Horvat (performance)
PACT Zollverein
Essen, DE
18 Mar, 2016
SZYMON KOBYLARZ
White is white and black is black
(group show)
9/11 Art Space Foundation and
Piekary Gallery
Poznań, PL
Nov 20 – Dec 27, 2015
----------Synchronization 2015: Concrete
(group show)
Capital City Public Libarary
Warsaw, PL
Nov 25 - Dec 31, 2015
----------Now, at the Latest
(group show)
Kunsthalle Krems
Krems, AUT
Nov 14, 2015 – Feb 21, 2016
KATARZYNA KOZYRA
BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from
the Former Soviet Union and Other
Mythical Places (group show)
MOMENTUM, Kunstquartier
Bethanien
Berlin, DE
Nov 14 – Dec 23, 2015
----------The Problem of God (group show)
Kunstsammlung NordrheinWestfallen
Düsseldorf, DE
Sep 26, 2015 – Jan 24, 2016
----------I LOVE YOU (group show)
Foundation Art and Science
Videoinsight
Turin, IT
Dec 3, 2015 – Mar 3, 2016
MARLENA KUDLICKA
Skulptur 2015 (group show)
Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl
Marl, DE
Oct 25, 2015 – Feb 7, 2016
----------Marlena Kudlicka (solo show)
Wroclaw Contemporary Museum
Poland
Wroclaw, PL
Feb 19 – Apr 3, 2016
ZOFIA KULIK
Wahrheiten - Zeitgenössische Kunst
im Dialog mit Alten Meistern, Werke
aus der Sammlung SØR Rusche
Oelde/Berlin
(group show)
Museum Abtei Liesborn
Wadersloh, DE
Nov 8, 2015 – Jan 10, 2016
----------...From the Depth...Artists from the
collection of the Silesian Museum
(group show)
Silesian Museum
Katowice, PL
Nov 27, 2015 – Apr 3, 2016
----------Imagination Reality
National Art Museum of Ukraine
and Galeria Labyrint
Kiev,UA and Lublin PL
Jan 30 – Mar 30, 2016
¬- - - - - - - - - - Miłosny performance
Galeria Labirynt
Lublin, PL
Feb 12 – Mar 30, 2016
----------BREAD AND ROSES THE STRATEGIES
OF CLASS IDENTIFICATION
Museum Sztuki Nowoczesnej
Warsaw, PL
Feb 19 – May 1, 2016
DOMINIK LEJMAN
10th Baltic Contemporary Art
Biennale: Troubled Water
(group show)
Muzeum Sztuki Współczesnej
Szczecin, PL
Dec 4, 2015 – Feb 14, 2016
AGNIESZKA POLSKA
Agnieszka Polska in Amsterdam
Private space of Angelique Crouwel
Amsterdam, NL
Nov 28 – Dec 31, 2015
----------The Moving Finger: A Performative
Lecture with Agnieszka Polska
MoMA,
New York, US
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
----------Project 35: The Last Act (group show)
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
Moscow, RU
Aug 10, 2015 – Jan 31, 2016
----------I LOVE YOU
(group show)
Foundation Art and Science
Videoinsight
Turin, IT
Dec 3, 2015 – Mar 3, 2016
----------Suspended Animation
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture
Garden
Washington, US
Feb 10 – Jul 17, 2016
NATALIA STACHON
LOmitted center
Loock Galerie, Berlin
Nov 6, 2015 – Feb 20, 2016
----------(group show)
Centre of Contemporary Art in Torun
Torun, Poland
Opening Feb 5, 2016
ART FAIRS
ARCO MADRID 2016: KWIEKULIK AND SZYMON KOBYLARZ
Szymon Kobylarz: Black Branch 2 (spiral), 2015, wooden sculpture, 6,5 × 23 × 12 cm and Black Branch 3 (Fib.1-7), 2015, wooden sculpture, 13 × 33 × 13 cm
For the upcoming edition of ARCOmadrid
2016, and following up on the previous editions, ŻAK | BRANICKA wishes to present
a new dialogue between artists of different
generations: Szymon Kobylarz (b.1981)
and the duo KwieKulik (1971-1987). This
time, the discourse surrounds Mathematics
and its role in art. While KwieKulik challenge the spatial relationship between objects, determining that the limited number
of spatial relationships between objects can
produce an infinite number of Aesthetic
Time-Effects, Kobylarz challenges the borders between the abstract and the concrete,
bringing to life sculptures that were nothing more than digital fractals. His focus is
particularly centered in the Fibonacci Sequence and how it manifests itself in natural
constructions such as DNA, human body
proportions, hurricanes or even in the shape
of a Galaxy. For his works, he transfers precise numbers onto simplified forms, building models of perfect trees and bushes out
of wood, whose lengths and thicknesses are
calculated and predetermined by a formula.
This perfection is not always mirrored in
the final result, that is beyond control, “I believe that with these works I am showing the
inconstancy of the human hand as compared
ŻAK | BRANICKA | Lindenstr. 35 | 10969 Berlin | www.zak-branicka.com | phone: +49 30 611 073 75
ŻAK | BRANICKA NEWSPAPER, WINTER 2016, No.14 © ŻAK | BRANICKA
Concept: Asia Żak Persons and Monika Branicka; Cooperation: Sofia Hauser, Nora Hillermann
Thank you: Alicja Jodko and Magazyn Szum, Karen Archey and Spike Art Quarterly, Angelique Crouwel-Kroon, l’étrangère London, Loock Galerie
to the precision of numbers, mathematics,
and computers, which deal much more
quickly and precisely with such simple figures. The mistakes I make while sculpting
these works, however, are much the same as
what the wind is for the trees”.
From another point of view, for KwieKulik,
mathematics and logic are a chance to save
a certain universal plane of interpersonal
communication following the collapse of
the modernist utopias: it is the only chance
to save a supra-individual rational exchange
that would avoid the trap of both relativism
and metaphysics.
Both KwieKulik and Szymon Kobylarz
share the fascination by infinity and its ability to manifest itself in different spheres, to
the extent that it becomes a bridge between
them. It will be the first time their works are
exhibited as a dual presentation, bringing
into evidence many of the common interests that bring together artists from different
generations and socio-political scenarios.
ARCO Madrid
Febuary 24–28, 2016
booth: 9C10
Feria de Madrid
Av. Del Partenón, 5, 28042 Madrid