JUSTYNA GÓROWSKA
FWJG
DALLAS – CYDONIA contemporary art gallery is pleased to announce JUSTYNA GOROWSKA’S FIRST AMERICAN solo exhibition: FWJG. The show OPENS FRIDAY, APRIL 10, 2015 AND RUNS UNTIL FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2015. A RECEPTION HONORING THE ARTIST IS SCHEDULED FOR FRIDAY, APRIL 17, WITH A LIVE PERFORMANCE STARTING AT 7PM.
Justyna Gorowska turns away from the cult status that surrounds the late Francesca Woodman and reorients our fascination towards Woodman’s sensitivity and sensibilities. Through Woodman’s instability of identity and what some writers describe as “anti-portraiture,” the mythical photographer explored how desire can be used to open up possibilities of transformation. In her first international exhibition, Polish performance artist Gorowska re-visits this transformation using Gilles Deleuze’s concept of desire as a potent catalyst of change. The artist further obliterates our presuppositions of individual essence through affinity as conceptualized in Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto.
FWJG exhibits a series of photographs and videos that refutes being reduced to imitation. This impossibility is predicated by the nature of Gorowska inserting her presence and reacting to her own surroundings. Viewers see the semblances of Woodman’s and Gorowska’s images by the very nature of re-articulation but inherent to these semblances are the differences. It is impossible for Gorowska to completely imitate Woodman’s identity or surroundings nor is it her intention. Gorowska allows her surroundings to dictate her emotions. The legendary American photographer’s work is the harmonic framework that supports improvisation and discovery on a different, young woman’s perspective, three decades later. Gorowska’s talent, therein, rests with the dissolution of herself. By immersing her presence into Woodman’s work, Gorowska’s method creates a tension that gives rise to transformation. The body present is no longer Woodman’s nor Gorowska’s.
Like the cyborg in Haraway’s new feminist myth, the works are no longer faithful to its origins or realities. This births a hybridity where boundaries of the body, culture, the individual, and material are blurred. She is extending, reviving, and creating new potential for conception of body and performance. The emerging star is extricating and then recouping the body and desire from our Freudian terms of understanding. Desire is not symbolic, taboo, or hidden. Desire is an active force that gives an individual the power to change and affect the state of matter. Essentially, it is desire that changes our world.
The public is invited to attend a RECEPTION HONORING THE ARTIST STARTING AT 6PM AND ENDING AT 8PM ON APRIL 17. FWJG OPENS ON FRIDAY, APRIL 10 AND RUNS UNTIL MAY 8, 2015.
FWJG is supported by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw.
Justyna Gorowska has an MFA from Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland. She has exhibited and performed widely throughout Poland, Spain, Germany, Italy, Israel, Norway, Iceland, Bosnia, Hungary, Romania, and Indonesia. She is a four-time recipient of scholarships from the Polish Ministry of Culture. In 2010, she won the Samsung Art Master award, a prestigious prize reserved for very brightest artists in Poland. Her most recent solo show The Girl Who Married a Volcano was at lokal_30 gallery in Warsaw, Poland. The artist lives and works in Poland.