Opening: Tuesday, October 26, 7 pm
Artist tour: Monday, November 15, 5 pm

In an unimaginably distant time (about 14 billion years ago), in an unimaginably short time, from a singularity of a completely incomprehensible nature, concentrated in a small point of infinite density and temperature, emerged all the elements necessary to form our universe – along with its energy, time and space. What came before – we do not know. Almost all our knowledge of the laws governing the cosmos is helpless against the period between 0 and 10−43 fraction of a second after the Big Bang.

The exhibition entitled THE THIRD FAILEDATTEMPT TO CREATE THE WORLD is yet another attempt to find a visual form for the imagination about the beginning of the Cosmos. The sculpture, consisting of dozens of glass spheres of various sizes displayed on a structure resembling a storage rack, contains a trace of an error, which lies at the core of the exhibition’s concept. The cracks on the white, shiny, flawless surfaces were not an intentional artistic gesture but a result of thefragility of the glass and physical forces acting on it. The meticulously designed architecture of the sculptural object was complemented by uncontrolled events, occurring violently and incidentally, at the liminal moment of the transition of matter from one state to another. The confrontation of scientific speculation on the origins of the cosmos and the private cosmology created for the exhibition is similarly turbulent. It reveals the paradoxical state of the knowledge available to us: it penetrates space and the structures of matter ever more thoroughly, but remains helpless in the face of what happened before the 10−43 fraction of a second of the world’s existence.

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Agata Michowska (born 1964) graduated in sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań. She runs the Video and Transmedia Narration studio at the Faculty of Media Art of the Art Academy in Szczecin and the Sculpture Studio at Collegium da Vinci in Poznań.

Over the years, her art has evolved from spatial realizations both ascetic and raw in form, devoid of any references to the outside world, to photography, video and sound that are a record of personal reflections on the elementary laws of life and death, creation and decay, passing and memory, affirmation and fear. The images and sounds, often supplemented with literary narration, bring us to the “point” where, according to the universal principle, everything dies and everything is reborn. 

As she notes on her art: “My thinking (…) has been shaped by my experiences with sculpture, which from the beginning I understood not as an object but as the movement of a certain idea in time and space. (…) What is important for me is not its materialization and arrest, but its transformation, constant movement, fluidity and changeability. It shares a similarity with the condition of the human, who is condemned to constant physical and spiritual transformation. This concept of sculpture seems to me close to the essence of film, which is an ideal combination of space, time and form, subject to their action.”

ON PIOTR MACHA’S EXHIBITIONJESUS WAS BORN 6-4 YEARS BEFORE CHRIST

Piotr Macha’s exhibition Jesus Was Born 6-4 Years Before Christ can be seen from different points of view and dimensions in which we operate today. He conveys a multifaceted message; one which is open to complex and intersecting areas of visual culture. Macha can sense the gaps and overlaps –not only in the sense of the breakdown of classical linearity or in the way of conveying the content, but also in the sense of the interpenetration of physical and virtual dimensions, their mutual “haunting”. The title of the exhibition Jesus Was Born 6-4 Years Before Christ signals its contradictory and non-obvious character. Moreover, it is full of ghosts: Mark Fisher is undoubtedly one of the main ones, whose theory is referred to in several places; Jackie Kennedy is another ghost; as is the virtual apparition of Sam Fisher, and so too perhaps the most enigmatic but nonetheless emblematic spirit of Maria Rekowska, whose drawings were found by the artist at the flea market (in the Old Slaughterhouse in Poznań) and are also part of the exhibition.

 Rekowska draws with a pencil from memory, from imagination and from nature. Regardless of the source, these works are quite similar in terms of form and theme –with the exception of one that is  quite abstract and which depicts what could be a plough, an axe or a hook-ended snake, coming out of a pair of trousers. Macha juxtaposes these drawings with his own works, and by using felt-tip pens or Donald Duck bubble gum comics, he evokes nostalgia in the visitors who grew up in the 90s. The artist creates strange, clunky collages that do not hide their component parts from us; we can imagine them broken down into prime factors, element by element; a few drawings, a piece of carbon paper, abstract scraps. They rely and are based, in a nonchalant way, on the recipient’s memory (and their participation in collective memory), their tart sense of humour and the ability to combine incompatible forms into coherent messages. Macha’s collages are a bitter and far-sighted reflection with abjection as the leitmotif. A CD – which is a reference to the cover of Kanye West’s album with the title Yezuus,(and so, significant in this context) – primarily reminds us of the fragile structure of modern memory carriers. Regardless of West’s megalomaniacal tendencies, his legacy, and more broadly, a large part of contemporary cultural heritage is written in the medium and on carriers that are not permanent. CDs, tapes, and disks, even if undamaged, are possibly indecipherable; inhabited by ghosts of data that we do not have, or will soon not have, access to. They work in harmony with Rekowska’s memory, but also reflect on the archaeology of technology, the constant progress of which makes it impossible to access their content, without removing their form. They semi-last and condemn us to refer to our own memory in the end. Tire graveyard (Macha), a cross (!) (Rekowska) are studies not so much from nature, as the latter indicates, but of nature itself –and despite the different times in which they were created (Rekowska’s drawings come from 1940), they are a record of distortions and perspectives, which, apart from the rigid framework, becomes more and more unnatural.

Macha also questions the issues of memory and historical perspective in his loop video showing Jackie Kennedy in a costume, which remains stained to this day and functions in our imagination as one of the most legendary garments in history, and which is stored in a specially constructed, acid-free box in air-conditioned National Archives ( College Park, Maryland). At Caroline Kennedy’s request, it is to remain there until at least 2103. The costume is also perfectly preserved in collective memory; we have seen it in documentary photos, and its reproductions in dozens of films, music videos and comics –all these images are superimposed on each other, are blurred and boiled down to certain generalities; limousine, pink suit, blood and woman on the hood of the car. In Macha’s video, we see pink, blood and Jackie stained with it, though we know it is not her blood, but the blood of President JFK –a belief that stays with us even later, when Jackie is lying, covered in blood and dead on the ground, with a close-up on the gunshot wound to the head. When Macha used to play JFK Reloaded, in which the player has to kill JFK, he always wanted to hit Jackie –  he finally succeeds at the exhibition. But at the same time, Macha allows her to be resurrected.

In the spirit of the same omnipotence, he places Sam Fisher, the fictional hero of the Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell series of books and computer games, alongside the writer Mark Fisher; their silhouettes are printed on transparent foil, which acts as a curtain. He sets both characters against each other, in a mirror image: we have to stand on opposite sides of the curtain to read the biographies of both. When reading about Sam, we see Jackie waving at us in the background. When reading about Mark, we can see baseball caps, worn by the artist, hung at equal spaces, which are separated by a casual message sewn with red thread:YOU – HAVE – NO – IDEA. YOU is immersed in a toilet, whose movable flap reveals its contents to us again and again. Looking inside the toilet is reminiscent of Hitchcock’s toilet from his Psycho. Macha shares Hitchcock’s love of the abomination that Žižek writes about inLacrimae rerum– while Hitchcock, however, was censored and was not allowed to reveal the inside of the toilet bowl and its bloody secret, Macha allows the toilet to whisper to us about the ideas gone down the toilet, not hesitating to mention who will sink with them.

Fisher analyses the departure from the modernist challenge of innovating cultural forms in a way that is adequate to contemporary experience in his book Ghosts of My Life, which accurately portrays all our ills, fears and intuitions. Macha places its title between two skeletons on a canvas, which he places against the wall. Fisher writes about the end of time and the lack of a future, about the constant movement that brings us nowhere; Macha’s toilet opens and closes, Jackie gets cleaned up, and despite the fatal shot, she continues to greet us. The lack of a future is understood here not only as the non-alternative nature of neoliberal capitalism in which we operate, but above all as the effects of its impact on culture over the last 30 years. Fisher describes the stagnation of culture, which refreshes past eras, mixes decades and is based on clichés of collective imaginations. The twenty-first century, on the other hand, continues to calcify, constantly satisfying the audience with a correctly prepared dose and combination of nostalgic clichés that soothe the hardly perceptible longing for something that was good, but also what we simply knew. However, as Fisher writes, it is difficult to imagine what such a set of “clichés” and consensus ideas could be like.

Over the last 30 years, the dominant (in the West) model of toilets has changed, which in the context of the discussed exhibition and considerations by Fisher turns out to be significant. In her famous analysis of the lavatories in the novel Fear of flying, Erica Jong describes different toilets: the French model (the contents of which disappear immediately after flushing), the German model (whose contents can be inspected) and the American model (which is a fusion of the previously mentioned models); the content floats but is “elusive”. Today, German toilets have basically fallen out of use, and the cultural circle broadly referred to as the “West” is usually divided by one model of the toilet – the French-American one, which swallows the contents. And this is perhaps the only area of modern Western functioning that is under-recorded, making it essentially a phantom.

The huge PlayStation logo is also a phantom and resembles a monument topped with spikes protecting against birds. It is immersed in twilight, illuminated in a similar way that city lights illuminate their topography; partially, nonchalantly, inaccurately, randomly. This creates an atmosphere reminiscent of a mixture of Blade Runnerand the Matrix, but also any square in any city that is full of invisible monuments, stone ghosts, nameless and great.

Macha’s neon lights bring to mind an encrypted message; two of them are visual equivalents of the words taketeand maluma, abstract symbols used in an experiment conducted in 1929 by Wolfgang Köhler, in which the subjects were to match the appropriate visual representation to the verbalised words. Most of the participants, regardless of their background, assigned the round-sounding word malumato a rounded shape, and the word taketeto an angular shape. The dual nature of a word is already contained in the form of its visual representation and the corresponding sound, which differ due to the multitude of languages and alphabets. The research suggests that as a species we share this perception of abstract form, at least in the most extreme examples. Mallarme observes that the way words sound do not necessarily correspond to their meaning; annoyingly, for example, joursounds dark, nuit–light[1]. He assigns poetry the task of creating a bond between them and refers to the ancient etymology of words, where these relations were alive. In a similar manner, Macha assigns yellow to the curved form, and blue to the angular one, which is also consistent with the common and intuitive ascribing of colours to shapes. Macha is less concerned with language, but rather negotiates the use of the medium itself –that is, neon and its functions.

Another neon sign, this time a gallows knot (Fisher died by suicide by hanging in January 2017) is also a Eureka! comic book light bulb. It is, however, not about light; Neon signs do not fulfil their pragmatic or luxurious function in the form of advertisements and signs on city streets, nor do they function as a traditionally catchy exhibition facility, but are instead a critical commentary on these functions. Red paving stones may refer directly to the place of neon in the city topography and they bring to mind problems of urbanisation such as gentrification or evictions. In the context of the art gallery, however, cherishing neon in the same way in which it did so light boxes until recently (because they always “work”), the form of Macha’s neon lights is almost irritating. They are not a catchy text, they demand substantive support from the visitor, they are demanding of the visitor. Time and mental space for intellectual effort to learn about “novelties” are a “commodity” that is missing, and the intensity and precariousness of functioning in late capitalism results in overstimulation and exhaustion, which obviously leaves its mark not only on the recipients of culture, but also on its creators. The problem, therefore, does not exist in experiencing the 21st century itself, but rather in the lack of time to experience it, as Macha reminds us of by placing an inconspicuous wristwatch on the wall, which his partner at that time set for 4.20 and left by his bed; for the duration of the exhibition this alarm goes off in the gallery at 4.20 am. In addition to the time and connotation close to marijuana consumers, the form of the watch itself brings to mind the English verb ‘watch’, which also refers to keeping watch and waking. Fisher writes about a society that cannot cope with history and, over time, longs for form. Perhaps the only forms we are faced with are those created by the needs born of capitalism, such as backpacks/containers delivering food from restaurants for the lowest hourly wage, which are most often immigrants from geographically distant countries, providing cheap labour. Uber Eats bags are an instantly recognisable form, regardless of whether they contain their logo or the inscription Only Sleep. This work, however, is far from the already cliché ready-made; it doesn’t so much capture a visual artefact of contemporary culture (the proverbial Cambell’s soup), but rather is characterised by postcolonial self-awareness. The Only Sleepslogan is, as it were, an admission of guilt – the question remains, what to do with such a feeling of guilt. Macha is a keen observer of the structures we are entangled in within the dominant system. His work does not allow us to forget about the place we occupy in these structures. It is also not a simple and unambiguous critique of specific phenomena or sensationalist visual journalism. If Macha pursues current socio-political events, he inscribes them into a broader discourse; in a sense he gloats over another bleak vision that has been fulfilled: a motif that has already appeared in his work as a phantom, which now becomes a fact. In this way, Macha does not so much summon ghosts, on the contrary, he foretells the phantoms and visions that will haunt the ages and dimensions to come; which we fear whilst also letting them come true.

Ewa Kubiak
When writing the text, I used Mark Fisher’s book “Ghosts of My Life”.

[1]Artur Sandauer, “Samobójstwo Mitrydadesa”[Trans. Mithridates’suicide]

Translation: Aleksandra Sokalska-Bennett

Piotr Macha  (born 1982) – a graduate of painting at the University of the Arts in Poznań, where he currently works. In his practice, he combines various media and forms of articulation – from drawing, through curatorial practices, poetry, analogue film, to sound installations. His works have been presented, among others, by theZachęta – National Gallery of Art,Kunstquartier Bethanien Berlin, and the Wrocław Contemporary Museum.

The spacetime, to which Anna Bąk invites us, resembles a phantasmal house; an abandoned house, already freed from the human bustle, repairs, cleaning, and the incessant replacement of worn-out objects with new ones. The objects that fill it bear traces of their former functions. The human mind, addicted to classifying and taming unfamiliar forms, even though it knows they are works of art, recognizes here something like a lamp, a toy, the remains of a curtain, furniture… The quiet murmur filling the gallery may bring to mind the humming of a fan or other household appliances. Of course, everything is off here and it is immediately clear that it is an illusion created by art.

But what is illusion and what is reality?

The first attempts to understand the function of objects belong to the consensus reality. According to Arnold Mindell, the founder of process oriented psychology, which at the moment colors my way of seeing things, it is dominated by everyday and material matters, as well as socially accepted logic. In this dimension, humans are autonomous and causal, act intentionally, consciously, and identify with their actions. Cognition and orientation in space and time correspond here to the laws of classical physics. Space has three dimensions and time runs linearly. The world consists of objects with certain physical characteristics: mass, shape, electric charge, position, and speed. These objects are relatively autonomous, and when they interact, they evolve in a deterministic manner.

In this everyday, consensus reality, the consciousness of the observer of reality does not matter, because reality is objective. Elements of the human body and objects have their definite shapes and functions: the head is used for thinking, toys for playing, a chair for sitting, a lamp for lighting, ventilation for cooling the air, a curtain for decoration, and garbage belongs in the garbage can. We make a drink out of kombucha mushrooms, and latex (a.k.a. rubber) is turned into gloves or sexual gadgets – and we don’t think about the dark energy associated with the colonial origins of this material. Physics studies matter and energy, psychology studies the human mind, and art serves to deepen reflection or entertain. In this dimension of the world, we focus on states that provide an illusion of security and permanence: solid state of matter, established ways of knowing and functioning, distinct places such as home, the office, or the city, and finally, life stages and identities (e.g., a student, worker, consumer, youth, old age…).

However, what we do not see, do not know, or are afraid to discover in ourselves and in the world does not disappear and does not stop influencing us. It appears individually and collectively in the unconscious and in the dreamland, where – in Mindell’s terms – external objectivity ceases to apply, and our desires, memories, fantasies, perceptions, and feelings are expressed. What we do not identify with also manifests itself in secondary processes: in what bothers us, what happens outside our will and consciousness.

On the other hand, what we separate in order to understand and tame it more easily turns out to be more complex, dynamic, and strangely intertwined. These relationships are revealed beyond causal links, for example, in synchronicities, which according to Carl Gustav Jung are a hypothetical principle of the all-union of events and mental states. In the dreamland, the laws of classical physics, such as gravity, no longer apply. Spacetime appears to be tensile and fluid. The boundaries between persons and objects blur, objects change scale and function, time loops. Permanent states begin to blur and turn into dynamic, interactive processes.

Because the consensus reality has been privileged for centuries, we encounter an edge on the way to consciously moving to the dreamland: anxiety and attachment to social roles. However, cutting ourselves off from dream energy and unintentional desires causes life (both personal and social) to become flat, depressing, and boring, as well as hollow. It becomes just an illusion, an accepted and often idealized image.

The phantasmal spacetime, designed in the Skala Gallery by Anna Bąk, is a proposal to cross this edge. The artist designs and stimulates it as a sensual experience, which is meant to break us out of the consensus reality. The process of her work resembles an alchemical transmutation: from the analysis and understanding of matter, through its disintegration, to the creation of other matter or the extraction of other qualities from it. As a result, a head can become a thing – a support for a sofa, a lamp can be a carrier of memories, and a curtain – a disturbing stain. Matter begins to disperse and vibrate, revealing its vitality and dynamics and freeing itself from the previous functions and shapes of objects. In some objects, the dominant quality is rust, others absorb the attention with the flash of latex, sheet metal, the porous texture of glass granules or iron filings. The relationship with the senses of the viewers is also established through low-frequency sounds. Emitted from objects resembling furniture (Sounds That Come in Waves), they resonate with bodies in a non-local way, turning them into instruments. The meanings of some things and materials remain in suspension, in a potential state – they have been forgotten or not yet recognized.

As framed by quantum physics, the role of the observer – the artist and the viewer – becomes crucial, because the experienced world is represented here from the inside. Depending on how they are perceived – to paraphrase the title of the exhibition – things can come to us in waves.

In quantum experiments with matter and energy, electrons or light are, using one method of measuring, waves, and, using other research tools, particles. Because we have been trained and coached for centuries to perceive and universalize only one objective dimension of reality, most of us do not know how to draw conclusions from invisible quantum processes. However, both process oriented psychology and quantum physics offer us helpful figures of parallel worlds and superposition. When a measuring device captures a particle, its wave function does not disappear, it exists virtually (in a so-called imaginary way). The same happens when we apply purely utilitarian criteria to everyday objects – their other, unconscious qualities do not cease to exist, they just operate in parallel (unconscious, secondary) worlds. These may be, for example, emotions, energies, or the fantasies associated with them, marginalized biochemical processes (e.g., the process unpleasant to human sensibility, conventionally called decay), or still other material affairs. Superposition, on the other hand, is an assemblage of all possible states (quantum, mental) and parallel worlds – a potential reality. We can approach it without scientific tools, with an accepting openness to the signals coming from the body, our premonitions, and dreams, as well as the movement between different dimensions of reality.

Anna Bąk’s objects are just such assemblages, which – while mystifying – project the experience of matter as a multidimensional, dynamic process.

text: Joanna Sokołowska

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Ania Bąk (born in 1984) is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź. In her artistic activity she uses various means of expression: she paints and creates objects, moving images, and sounds. She has participated in numerous exhibitions in Poland and abroad, including Enblanco Gallery and Grimmuseum in Berlin, Spedition Gallery in Bremen, 9/10 Gallery and SKALA Gallery in Poznań, Galeria Czynna and Pracownia Portretu in Łódź, as well as in the festivals Trans Art in Bolzano and the Warsaw Autumn. Her recent exhibitions include Drumming the Night at Pracownia Portretu in Łódź (2019) and Comic Eyes of the Sun, Not Tears [Komiczne oczy słońca, nie łzy] (with Wera Bet) at OS17 in Szczecin (2019). In 2015 she received the scholarship of the President of the City of Łódź for people involved in artistic creation.
Since 2011 she has been working in the Multimedia Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź. She lives in Poznań.

Agnieszka Grodzińska is the creator of installations, spatial works, paintings, drawings and videos. She uses found footage and is interested in multiplication, reproduction and the mechanisms of social and individual disciplining.
The exhibition at the SKALA Gallery is part of this trend in her work. Headquarters is a monolithic site-specific installation dealing with the functioning of people in shared spaces. The artist plays with references to architectural plans of offices and elements of their decor, such as time cards or infographics and unambiguously instructional messages. In the work presented here, Agnieszka Grodzińska once again explores the boundaries between freedom and control. She is interested in the tension and discomfort felt in public situations. The installation Headquarters is built on the principle of metaphor and the inversion of perspective. Minimalist elements, taken from office spaces, create a kind of cipher, showing an infinite number of points of view.

Agnieszka Grodzińska (born 1984) – a creator of installations, spatial works, paintings, drawings and videos. She uses found footage and is interested in multiplication, reproduction and mechanisms of social and individual disciplining. She has participated in the following exhibitions: Roy da Prince, Futura Gallery, Prague (2016), Soon This Body Will Be Still, Matca Art Space, Cluj-Napoka, Romania (2019), Second Shower, Rodriguez Gallery, Poznań (2018), Manipure, MOS, Gorzów (2018), Stretching Space, Inda Gallery, Budapest (2016), Open Studio. Artist in Residence, Futura Karlin Studio, Prague (2016), Saturation Rhythm, Galerie Laboratorio, Prague (2013).
She has received a fellowship from the Art in General program in New York (2019), and has twice received fellowships from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in Poland (2009 and 2011), as well as the Visegrad Fund (2016 and 2018). She has participated in residency programs at Gyeongju Art Centre, Gyeongju (Korea 2019) and at Bartok-negyed/Eleven Blokk Art Foundation (Budapest 2018), Futura Karlin Studio (Prague 2016), betOnest/The Emergence of a New Art Space, Stolpe/Oder, Brandenburg (2017), Institut für Alles Mögliche (Berlin 2015), BANSKÁ ST A NICA Contemporary (Slovakia 2014). She lives in Poznań and also works at the Academy of Art in Szczecin.

Wystawa Pokrzepiająca moc kserówki jest poświęcona działalności wydawniczej, projektowaniu graficznemu oraz performatywnym strategiom wizerunkowym i komunikacyjnym krakowskiej grupy POTENCJA, którą tworzy troje malarzy: Karolina Jabłońska, Tomasz Kręcicki i Cyryl Polaczek. Formacja działająca od 2012 roku na przestrzeni kilku lat organizowała wystawy pop-up i wydarzenia w nie-galeryjnych przestrzeniach oraz realizowała autorskie projekty performatywnowystawiennicze. Nieodłączną częścią ich działalności były i są druki ulotne (wydawane własnym sumptem ziny, foldery i katalogi wystaw) oraz materiały reklamowe (fotomontaże, ulotki, plakaty). Wystawa skupia się na języku i stylu komunikacji, które artyści konsekwentnie rozwijają, wysuwając na pierwszy plan to, co zwykle funkcjonuje jedynie jako materiały towarzyszące prezentacji sztuki. Entuzjastyczna retoryka i kontekst pół serio, w którym POTENCJA sytuuje swoje działania są przejawem afirmatywnego podejścia do sztuki i budowania środowiska artystycznego opartego na przyjaźni. W tym świetle dowartościowanie wspólnej zabawy, jako czynnika uwalniającego szczerą radość z tworzenia i współpracy, rozbija powagę i ciężar oficjalnego dyskursu, jednocześnie otwierając możliwość do snucia fantazji i mistyfikacji.

W ramach działań artyści przyjmują różne role i wcielenia, performując kolektywne byty, takie jak: grupa badaczy cywilizacji pozaziemskich („Interstelaż”, 2016), zespół filmowy („Seans”, 2017), redakcja czasopisma („Łałok”, od 2018), gwiazdy muzyczne („Soundcheck”, 2019), galerzyści (Galeria Potencja, od 2015), aspirujący artyści („Future Perfect”, 2017), wielcy malarze („Wielcy Malarze”, 2012) czy handlarze („Interes”, 2018). Tytułową „kserówkę” odczytywać można zarówno w kontekście działalności wydawniczej formacji, żartobliwego projektowania graficznego, jak i nieustannego grania z wizerunkiem i chałupniczego imitowania wizualnych kodów innych dziedzin kultury i dyscyplin. Taki wymiar ma również aranżacja ekspozycji, która przywołuje konwencje wystawiennicze peryferyjnych izb muzealnych i domów kultury. Każdy z czterech działów, na które została podzielona wystawa, prezentuje konkretny okres bądź strategię w twórczości artystów, zwracając szczególną uwagę na językotwórcze i wspólnototwórcze aspekty tej działalności.

GALERIA

Trzonem funkcjonowania POTENCJI, obok kolektywnych projektów realizowanych w różnych miejscach, jest działalność galeryjna. Kolektyw na przestrzeni lat prowadził kilka przestrzeni wystawienniczych. Pierwsza z nich miała swoją siedzibę w Telpodzie, dawnej fabryce kabli na krakowskim Zabłociu zaadaptowanej na pracownie artystyczne. Tam odbyły się wystawy „Nowa para oczu” Karoliny Jabłońskiej (2015), inicjująca działalność grupy pod nazwą POTENCJA oraz wspólne wystawy „Wydalone” i „Interstelaż” (2016). W listopadzie 2016 roku artyści przenieśli się do niewielkiej przestrzeni przy ulicy Józefińskiej 34a, której działalność zainaugurowana została pierwszą solową wystawą Martyny Czech pt. „Pewne konflikty”. W POTENCJI na Józefińskiej do czerwca 2017 roku odbyło się siedem indywidualnych i grupowych wystaw. Ostatnią przestrzenią wystawienniczą prowadzoną przez POTENCJĘ jest lokal przy ul. Rakowickiej 11A/3 w Krakowie. Na wystawie prezentowane są wybrane plakaty z wystaw z ostatnich czterech lat.

Zanim powstała nazwa grupy, artyści organizowali wystawy pop-up i wydarzenia, na których prezentowali własną twórczość wraz z pracami zaprzyjaźnionych osób. Pierwszą z wystaw zrealizowanych w 2012 roku przez Jabłońską, Kręcickiego i Polaczka była „Wiosna” w barze Wiarus, tanim bufecie znajdującym się nieopodal wydziału malarstwa krakowskiej ASP. Jesienią po zamknięciu baru artystom udało się przejąć przestrzeń i przekształcić ją w galerię Bar Wiarus, gdzie odbyły się wystawy pop-up „Drugie danie” i „Odgrzewana zupa”. Już wówczas wystawom towarzyszyły przygotowane własnym sumptem katalogi i foldery. W jednej z gablot prezentowane są rzadkie, niskonakładowe druki i plakaty z pierwszych wystaw oraz bogaty zbiór innych materiałów reklamowych, ulotek i katalogów.

BIZNES

Po kilku latach prowadzenia niezależnej galerii i realizowania niekomercyjnych projektów Jabłońska, Kręcicki i Polaczek zdecydowali się wkroczyć ze swoimi ideami na rynek sztuki. W 2017 roku w galerii przy ul. Józefińskiej 34a artyści zrealizowali wystawę „Future Perfect”, opowiadającą w ironiczny sposób o rynkowych aspiracjach, pogoni za sukcesem i statusie artystycznych gwiazd, które znów POTENCJA performowała. Spełnieniem marzeń o wielkim świecie był udział artystów w targach NADA Art Fair Miami w 2019 roku. Mimo, że artyści zostali zakwalifikowani na targi i udało im się pozyskać finansowe wsparcie sponsorów na sam wyjazd, transport większych dzieł sztuki za ocean okazał się sporym wyzwaniem logistycznym. Artyści zmieścili więc mniejsze formaty swoich obrazów w walizce, w niej przywieźli je na Florydę i zaprezentowali na pokrytym przaśną tapetą stoisku, żartując sobie tym samym ze swojego statusu i możliwości, a przy tym całkiem poważnie i szczerze – pomimo ograniczeń – realizując marzenia.

Innym wystąpieniem POTENCJI w kontekście rynku sztuki była wystawa-akcja „Interes”, będąca częścią programu Warsaw Gallery Weekend 2018. Artyści zorganizowali kilkudniowy bazar usytuowany w centrum Warszawy, na którym prawie czterdziestu młodych twórców i twórczyń z różnych miast prowadziło drobne sprzedaże, akcje, wymiany utrzymane raczej w duchu ekonomii dzielenia się niż zysku. W interesie POTENCJI leż był więc podbój rynku sztuki, ale wprowadzenie kontrabandy młodej twórczości na komercyjny festiwal. Wspólne działanie i wytwarzanie społeczności generuje inny rodzaj waluty, wywołując zamieszanie na giełdzie symbolicznego kapitału.

FILM i MUZYKA

Zespół Filmowy Potencja powstał w 2017 roku z okazji wystawy „Seans” w Galerii Szara (kuratorzy: Gaweł i Magdalena Kownaccy). Artyści zmienili wówczas katowicką galerię w tymczasowe kino. W jego repertuarze znalazły się krótkie filmy kręcone przez artystów i ich przyjaciół, eksplorujące stylistyki i konwencje kina gatunkowego. Kluczowymi elementami projektu były jednak plakaty i ulotki anonsujące filmy. Niektóre z filmów nigdy nie powstały i funkcjonują jedynie jako zmistyfikowane identyfikacje wizualne. Parodiując kampanie reklamowe produkcji filmowych i kina festiwalowego, artyści wykreowali obraz prężnie działającego studia. Analogiczna strategia mimikry została zastosowana do plakatów muzycznych, na których artyści podszywają się pod członków koncertujących zespołów. W tym przypadku artyści imitują wizualne imaginarium poszczególnych gatunków muzycznych oraz formułę tras koncertowych, a sami odgrywają role gwiazd.
Odwołania do metod produkcji, promocji i dystrybucji stosowanych w innych dziedzinach kultury, odnoszą się również do obszaru sztuk wizualnych, którego granice i konwencje POTENCJA przełamuje. Odbywa się to zarówno przez kolektywne autorstwo, produkcji filmowych, modelu, który przełożony na zindywidualizowaną twórczość artystyczną generuje nowe jakości i pozwala na eksperyment, jak i gościnnych występów, wystaw w instytucjach w innych miastach, wspólnych podróży na wystawy, które na wzór tych koncertowych można traktować jak trasy wystawiennicze.

ŁAŁOK

Konsekwencją wydawniczych zainteresowań POTENCJI, i zarazem programowym manifestem, jest drukowane od 2018 roku czasopismo „Łałok”. Czarno-biały kserowany zin sytuuje się gdzieś pomiędzy gazetką szkolną a wydawniczymi tradycjami anarchistycznych, dadaistycznych i neoawangardowych XX-wiecznych ugrupowań artystycznych. „Łałok” to platforma skupiająca społeczność młodych artystów i artystek, przyjaciół POTENCJI. Opiera się na materiałach wysłanych przez autorów i autorki, które mają pełną dowolność w ich formie i treści. W efekcie zin jest rozciągniętym na kilkadziesiąt stron kącikiem rozmaitości zawierającym wachlarz postaw i historii: od relacji z podróży, przez reklamy i informacje o wystawach, po osobiste wiersze, wyznania i anegdoty. Do tej pory ukazały się cztery numery zina, ostatni z nich w lutym 2020 roku. W ramach wystawy zostanie wydany nowy numer „Łałoka”, a w nim prace, teksty, wiersze i rozmowy nadesłane przez niemal 50 artystek/ów z całej Polski oraz Czech, Niemiec i Irlandii. Nie jest wciąż pewne, czy w najbliższych tygodniach galeria zostanie udostępniona publiczności. Wszystkie zainteresowane osoby mogą natomiast zamówić najnowsze wydanie „Łałoka”, by w domowym zaciszu chłonąć radość z pokrzepiającej mocy kserówki.

Formularz zamówienia: https://cutt.ly/1vm12SH

POTENCJA – kolektyw artystyczny współtworzony od 2016 roku przez malarkę i malarzy z Krakowa: Karolinę Jabłońską (ur. 1991 r.), Tomasza Kręcickiego (ur. 1990 r.) i Cyryla Polaczka (ur. 1989 r.). W ramach kolektywnej działalności organizują wystawy w Galerii Potencja, produkują filmy a wraz z nimi, plakaty, ulotki, rekwizyty, kostiumy, scenografie a także muzykę. Od 2018 roku wydają magazyn „Łałok”, do którego współtworzenia zapraszają osoby z całej Polski. Jako grupa prezentowali wystawy i projekty między innymi: NADA Projects ArtFair, Miami; Gutstein Gallery, Savvannah; Rondo Sztuki, Katowice; Warsaw Gallery Weekend, Warszawa; LIA Spinnerei, Lipsk; Schwartz Contemporary, Berlin; Bar Wiarus, Kraków.

Karolina Babińska is the author of ephemeral and laconic, site-specific installations. This time she refers to the former function of the place where the SKALA gallery is located – it used to be a gunsmith. An arsenal as an expression with an ambiguous character and internal tension prompts the artist to consider the presence of hidden violence and the powerlessness associated with it. Collecting weapons can mean both storing them, that is, preparing for a fight, and surrendering. The artist presents a series of works in which she analyzes the need for being observant and cautious and how the body reacts to violence.

Karolina Babińska (born in 1986) is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Szczecin. A graduate of the local Academy of Art, she completed her diploma in 2017 in the studio of Kamil Kuskowski. She is the winner of the 2018 Project Room competition at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art and the finalist of the 2017 Hestia Artistic Journey competition. She received the Creative Scholarship of the City of Szczecin in 2019. She expresses herself mainly in the field of installation, but also photography and video, as well as writing. She is associated with the literary and theatrical community and is an author of theatrical scenography and exhibition arrangements. The artist contests reality, including the world of art. She creates conceptual installations with a strong critical and philosophical undercurrent. Her works are inspired by the context of time or place, which serves as a starting point for artistic interpretation.

8.2—4.3.2021
Opening: Monday, 8 February, 6 pm

Galeria Skala, ul. Święty Marcin 49a, Poznań
open from Monday to Friday, from 12—6 pm

*We’re kindly reminding you to wear masks and to take necessary precautions.

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Home is a place we left. The next generation of young adults is setting out into the world. They leave behind a space that, so far, has protected their uniqueness and helplessness. The empty space, however, still waits for its dwellers and beckons them tirelessly, causing a mysterious feeling of non-fulfillment, permanent anxiety, a sense of instability, and sleep disorders. Dominika Olszowy creates a fictional space that never could have existed, but which constantly marks its presence. Like a phantom, it wedges itself into the actual realm of life and resonates in unconscious everyday practices.

In her artistic practice, the artist uses video, mockumentaries, performance, TV programs, spiritualist sessions, installations, objects, sets, music bands, galleries, and motorcycle gangs. Unusual conventions and unfashionable aesthetics, which she employs in a daring way, get a second life in her works. The boundaries between fiction and fact blur, real stories develop their fantastic character, and actual places gain a supernatural dimension. Her productions are saturated with bitter humor and irony. Sometimes they are ugly and often touching.

DOMINIKA OLSZOWY (born 1982) studied Intermedia at the University of Arts in Poznań, as well as at the Faculty of Media Art and Scenography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. She has presented her works, among others in Zachęta –– National Gallery of Art, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, Museum of Modern Art, Plato Gallery in Ostrava (Czech Republic), Raster Gallery in Warsaw, lokal_30, MOS in Gorzów Wlkp., and at the Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA). Since 2008, he has been creating the ephemeral Sandra Gallery. She co-founded the radical hip-hop group Cipedrapskuad and the moped gang Horsefuckers M.C. She often collaborates with theater makers, creating sets for performances. In 2019, she received the “Spojrzenia” Deutsche Bank Award for the most interesting young Polish artist of the last two years. She lives and works in Warsaw.

Exhibition is currently available to view through front windows and online during the sanitary regime related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Lada Nakonechna is the creator of drawings, photographs, installations, and performative actions. The artist’s work is deeply immersed in the politics of vision. Nakonechna is a careful observer of visual messages present in public space. Her works refer not only to current events in Ukraine, but also provide insightful analyses of the relations of power, violence, and alienation in contemporary European societies.

The Bodies in the Distance exhibition at the :SKALA gallery consists of works made by the artist since 2014, including the most recent ones created during her residency in Poznań. The title of the exhibition refers not only to the social condition during the so-called sanitary regime related to the Covid-19 pandemic — it also explores the atomization and disintegration of social relations under the pressure of the dominant discourses of power.

The installation Negotiating table from 2014 is dedicated to the victims of the protests of 2013–2014. In a succinct, bitterly ironic gesture, the artist placed photos of beaten demonstrators on a table in places that should be occupied by the sides of political negotiations. Created in 2015, a series of pencil drawings entitled War in Ukraine is a conceptual analysis of the language used to describe the armed conflict in Donbass. Each of the drawings offers a threefold interpretation of the same phrase, showing that the structure of language depends on our political position. The video work Switch on red from 2016 is a minimalistic performance to the camera showing the relativity of symbols that define political and cultural identity. The red flag presented at the beginning of the project changes colors thanks to the filters used. However, it is not the matter of the banner that changes, but its perception — depending on how certain visual parameters are set.
The exhibition also features the artist’s works made during her residency in Poznań. The installation  Photozone consists of prints transferred directly onto the gallery wall. They multiply the word “God”, which was added to the monuments in Poznań and Białystok after the transformation in 1989 in order to improve or change their meaning. The point was to make them fit better with the requirements of the new official historical narrative. The work Package deals with the same topic. It is comprised of packages hung on the wall with patterns reproducing the inscriptions from the Monument to the Victims of June 1956 in Poznań and the Monument to the Heroes of Białystok Land in Białystok. The words: HONOR, GOD, LAW, BREAD, and HOMELAND, which appear taken out of context on the wrappers, have been repeated so many times that they have almost completely lost their meaning and are worth less than the paper on which they were printed. A critical analysis of monuments, which are carriers of the official historical policy in Poland, seems to be an important path for interpreting the exhibition. The same topic is also addressed in a small work entitled In foliage and in stone (self-portrait). This photo was taken in front of the Monument to the Polish Underground State in Poznań. You can only see the leaves and the light reflecting from the polished stone slab. The face of the author of the self-portrait is completely invisible. Two drawings The search of a “proper” sign for the monument to the Polish protests is a record of media texts about women’s protests against the Constitutional Court’s decision to enact stricter anti-abortion laws. The artist was in Poland during the culmination of the Women’s Strike demonstrations and made an attempt to create a description of a hypothetical monument dedicated to these events. The installation Untitled (dedicated to exhibitions) is a site-specific work using the unique features of the space of the SKALA gallery. The artist noticed a small hole in the windowpane — on the opposite wall, she placed a pierced object, which consists of pressed posters for exhibitions at the Arsenał Municipal Gallery in Poznań. The opening in the object is directly opposite the hole in the pane. When we look into the cavity hollowed out in the layers of the posters, we can see the hidden layers of prints revealing themselves to us, similarly to a geological open pit. This way, the artist comments on the accumulating effort of yet another art show, yet another artwork hung on the walls, which create a thicker layer, through which it is increasingly more difficult to break through.
At the exhibition in the SKALA gallery, Lada Nakonechna pays special attention to words as a vehicle for empty, hypocritical, blurred, and deceptive meanings; words whose content is rapidly eroding in the field of media and politics. The artist, on the other hand, appreciates the significance of words, giving her works very precise titles, which each time are an important part of the message.
The minimalist, conceptual form of these creations identifies precisely where the conflicts of meanings occur. Lada Nakonechna’s art is a multidimensional critical practice that exposes the official historical, economic, and symbolic discourses, which at all times, are an emanation of political and linguistic violence and oppression.
At the same time, the artist signals that she is aware of the aesthetic and cultural context that comprises the codes, with which she can communicate with her viewers. Her actions are aimed at retrieving social consciousness and creating alternative narrations, which will aid the process of political and cultural emancipation.

Marek Wasilewski

Lada Nakonechna (born in 1981 in Dnepropetrovsk) studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kiev. The artist has been the winner of the Pinchuk Art Center Prize (2013) and the Kazimir Malevich Art Award, funded by the Polish Institute in Kiev (2014). She has participated in numerous exhibitions in Ukraine and abroad. In 2011, she carried out a public space project in Leipzig — a mural at the “Albertina” University Library. She has organized an individual exhibition Weekdays at {Bank Pekao Project Room} at Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (2012), and — together with Zahanna Kadyrova —  she has prepared the exhibition Experiments at BWA Warsaw (2016). Her works have also been shown at Національний художній музей України, National Art Museum of Ukraine (Kiev, 2012, 2017), Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (Poland, 2015), Kunsthall Trondheim (Norway, 2015), Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig (Germany, 2015), Palais Populaire, Berlin (Germany, 2018), and Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb (Croatia, 2018).
Since 2005, she has also cooperated with the R.E.P. group (Revolutionary Experimental Space). She is the co-founder of the Hudrada curatorial collective and The Method Fund (2015), as well as the editor of Prostory.net.ua ľ — an online magazine on literature, art, and politics. In 2019, she participated in the collective exhibition Tale of Novorossiya at the Arsenał Municipal Gallery in Poznań.
Lada Nakonechna is the first recipient of the Association Wielka 19 scholarship in Poznań for visual artists from the states of the former Soviet Union.

Opening: Friday, 23 October, 7 pm
& performance live-set, 8 pm

“Architecture parlante” concerns an artifact’s potential to tell stories and to envision new paths for collective living. Its title “Speaking architecture” derives from a term coined by Claude Nicolas Ledoux to describe structures that explain their own function or identity. The project includes a series of objects and possible architectures inspired by what artists defined as “architecture novel” about a fictive group of individuals enmeshed in a conspiracy to take over the main institution controlling their city. The show will start with a performance in which the public will be invited to live and experience the architecture itself.

Parasite 2.0 was founded in 2010 as an independent research unit, a space of expression parallel to the academic environment. The founders are Stefano Colombo (1989); Eugenio Cosentino (1989), Luca Marullo (1989). They investigate the status of human habitats, acting within a hybrid of architecture, design and scenography.

Their works were presented, among others at the Museum of Design and Contemporary Art in Milan (2020), at the Design Festival in Madrid (2020), at the Camp Design Gallery in Milan (2019), Ar / Ge Kunst in Bozen (2019), Damien and The Love Guru in Brussels (2019) ), MAMbo Museum of Contemporary Art in Bologna (2018), at the Terraforma festival in Milan (2018 and 2017), domesti.city in New York (2018), 501 (c)3 Foundation in Los Angeles (2017) at the 20th Chilean Biennale of Architecture in Valparaíso, (2017), the Venice Architecture Biennale (2014, 2012) and the Shenzhen Architecture Biennale (2015).

They have led didactic activity at the Faculté d’architecture de l’université libre de Bruxelles, Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, Design Academy Eindhoven and Politecnico di Milano, among others. They taught at NABA Nuova Accademia Belle Arti Milano, and since 2016 they have been regularly teaching at MADE Program-Accademia di Belle Arti R. Gagliardi in Syracuse, Italy.

Parasite 2.0 was awarded with the Young Architects Program MAXXI in 2016. They are artists in residence at Jan Van Eyck Academie and mentee at Forecast for the 2019 program. Parasite 2.0 is represented by Operativa Arte Contemporanea Gallery and Galleria Corraini Arte Contemporanea.

*Exhibition is organized in association with Italian Cultural Institute in Warsaw.
La mostra è stata organizzata in collaborazione con l’Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Varsavia.