NOT I: Róża Litwa, Agnieszka Polska and Wojciech Bąkowski
18 April – 6 July, 2014
Launch 25 April, 6-8pm
The exhibition ‘Not I’ brings together the works of three artists representing the young generation in Polish art: Róża Litwa, Agnieszka Polska and Wojciech Bąkowski, whose works present a set of narrations and distinctive languages. Their diverse artistic approaches are showed in a mix of mediums and forms: sound, object, animation and gouaches.
Agnieszka Polska’s meditative film collages express a feeling of isolation and inability to establish a real connection with the past, which leads to distortions of the present. Her painstakingly executed animated collages, realized in a very slow motion are made from all sorts of visual sources and add up to the constant re-writing of history, including the history of art. Her use of technological tools in making these works results in an even more mediated narrative and evokes a rather bleak atmosphere, yet remains visually very attractive.
Wojciech Bakowski’s isolation can be heard from within the interior of his own apartment – the artist’s personality is revealed through his voice as his major mediums remain music and poetry, which absorb and contain everything around him and occasionally materialize into objects. In an isolated home environment, he makes objects that are like material renderings of his alter ego’s incessant flow of words describing mundane surrounding. These objects usually contain moving devices, which seem to be sending and receiving signals and messages, albeit distorted.
Róża Litwa in her series of oil drawings seeks identity in a delicate and subtle depiction of a repeatedly occurring subject – a body: formed by a bordering, vibrating line, which makes these works function almost as diagrams or graphs of a membrane. They are rendered by a neurotic personality and usually show the body disfigured, mechanically multiplied or isolated.
The title of the exhibition refers to Samuel Beckett’s famous piece ‘Not I’ recorded for television, where the actress’ mouth constantly spurting words is seen completely disjointed from the black background. The exhibition delves intothese resonating sounds and words, awkward objects and emerging selves.