new art in polandThe Mazovian Culture and Art Center in Warsaw has organized subsequent editions of the Art Festival from 2006; each devoted to a different artistic material. After paper, metal and wood, stone has been in focus.
The 4th year Łódź University Art History student. (2009 r.)
A HARD, RESISTANT, SLIGHTLY FORGOTTEN TODAY material, has become the main hero of one of the Festival events organized in the Polish Sculpture Center in Orońsko. "Like a Rolling Stone" exhibition has not been merely a presentation of works by the recognized Polish sculptors. First of all, this has been a formal and verbal game played with viewers, a set of visualized associations referring to a stone and its place in our everyday way of thinking.
This has been achieved thanks to the works by over thirty artists who have made a multi media collage, frequently quite freely interpreting the material in question. Certainly, one could not complain about the absence of works showing a traditional approach to stone, such as An Erotic Pillow by Barbara Falender, A Small Dog by Adam Procki, The Stone of Faith by Jan Kucz. Known, highly appreciated pieces, extremely subtle and sophisticated in their form, exposed roughly, directly on the floor, remind of their origins, a rock lying on the ground or hidden inside it.
Other works stressed a different quality of a stone - namely its lasting that turns it into a speechless witness of history. The tragic history, as in Four Stones by Mariusz Tarkawian (sketches of stones found in the former concentration camp in Majdanek, Lublin), and the everyday reality of high-rise apartment blocks illustrated in two movies by Paweł Althamer. The latter shows a pebble from a housing estate backyard, painted in many colors. It is no longer a cheap accessory, but a sentimental souvenir, an inseparable element of the memories from this place.
In some works, however, the presence of a stone has not been obvious at all. It has frequently appeared as a secondary character, thus underlying its various forms of existence in art and in our lives. A distinctive, perverse example presents A Steelworker by Xawery Dunikowski - obviously not as an original - in the form of a copy on a postage stamp.
A teasing sense of humor has been visible in such works as Father's Pain by Oskar Dawicki who displayed a kidney stone on a tiny cushion, or A Stone on Top of a Stone by Kamil Kuskowski, offering a pile of books; the title of each containing the key word. Similar climate has been present in two films by Zygmunt Rytka: The Time at a Disposal and The Time to Take Up a Decision. The latter showing the artist determined to shift a river pebble a couple of meters further from its original location, where it most likely had stayed for hundred years. Within this context, a stone is not merely a potential decorative accessory, but rather a tool to manifest one's desires or an urge to protest, as in the piece by Paweł Kowalewski, A Design of a Monument to All Who Were, All Who Are and All Who Will Be Against.
It is worth noting that the invited artists included not only sculptors but also multi media and others who generally work in completely different material. For example, Dariusz Korol decided to translate his characteristic painting technique into new medium specially for the purpose of this exhibition. The Smoky Stones, covered with soot, turned deep black, resembling a luxurious soft velvet; thus inviting to touch their new surface. I Am Going for Air by Cezary Bodzianowski - filling in, and at the same time complementing the exposition - refers to a sense of hearing. The sounds of sculptors at work resounding from loudspeakers make an extremely strong impact on viewers' imagination. Hearing the noise of electric tools cutting stone, one can nearly smell the dust they should have produced.
The whole exhibition has been permeated - literally and metaphorically - with the presence of stone. This specific ennoblement, however, has been neither too insistent, nor too grandiose. The presented wide range of artists and techniques does not offer pathetic mile stones of Polish art, rather colorful kaleidoscopic images that are very pleasant to watch.
"Like a Rolling Stone", a multimedia exhibition accompanying the Stone Art Festival, curator: Leszek Golec, the Polish Sculpture Center, Orońsko, September - October 2009; the Appendix 2 Gallery, Warsaw, October 2009.
