LOOP Barcelona 2015 – Hotel Catalonia Ramblas | c. Pelai 28, Barcelona
Room 32
June 4 – 6, 2015
For this year’s edition of LOOP Barcelona, ŻAK | BRANICKA is delighted to present Faces, a video installation by Poland’s most well known female video artist Katarzyna Kozyra.
The work Faces examines the relation between dance and human emotions. Originally shown on large screens surrounding the viewer, it has now been redesigned and presented as a projection accompanied by a TV screen with a classical documentation of the performance from an outside perspective. The single channel main projection enhances the dramatic effect of the work. It shows faces undergoing extreme emotions: intense concentration, tension, and equally intense effort. Clenched mouths, rapidly moving eyeballs and frowning foreheads with trickles of sweat. These are the faces of famous dancers (Magdalena Ciechowicz, Carla Fracci and Vladimir Malakhoff, among others): classical, modern, and hip-hop styles captured doing their showpiece performances. We do not see the dancers bodies; the instruments with which they usually express themselves. We only see their faces, which are invisible to the viewers during the performance. Dance itself is being deconstructed here, separated into the individual movements and frames in a process of tedious animation and then assembled together again. In Faces what was before unseen and unremarkable part of the performance is now our central focus and we cannot help but become hypnotized by the motion and the intensity that is being conveyed.
Should you be in Athens between 21-24 June, 2015, please make sure to visit the Stavros Niarchos Foundation for a screening of works by Katarzyna Kozyra, Matthew Barney, William Kentridge, Isaac Julian, (among other artists), titled Fireflies in the Night, curated by Barbara London.