Maria Wasilewska with the exhibition “Reflections & Distortions” not only presents six unreleased sculptures, but concludes a long and ambitious project started in Milan2several years ago.
All the works of this cycle – photographs, sculptures and installations – are the result of the research for a strong distortion in their reflection. According to the artist, art just represents postmodern chaos and the distortion of reality in which we live hidden behind an apparent order.
The same origin of the title of the exhibition – Reflections and Distortions – refers to a reflection the artist made some time ago while speaking to me: “my idea of art itself concerns distortion. Art is just that “distortion”, that alteration of reality which leads the viewers to reflect over the work not to reflect themselves into the work”.
The artist evaluates her art quantifying and measuring the degree of distortion reached: the greater the presence of distortions through movements, reflexes and other interferences, the greater the possibility that the viewers stop interpreting and rationalizing reality and what is around them.
Who are those shapeless monsters we see in the reflection of Maria Wasilewska’s sculptures? Do they represent us? Actually, the works – apparently algid and perfect –want to find deformity in the reflection as the only true way to represent reality. The viewer finds himself lost, deformed and multiplied in front of the work of art…one, no one, one hundred thousand. Both multiplicity and deformity are unlimited, trapped in numerous photo shots which lead us to reflect once more on who we are, on the world around us, on how we see ourselves and our world. Maria Wasilewska with her works does not give answers but reminds us that contemporary man only has one certainty: “I know that I don’t know” or better “I know that I cannot know”.
1 – Critic text by Sabino Maria Frassà at Maria Wasilewska’s exhibition “Reflections & Distortions” 14 November 2018 – 16 January 2019.
2 – Project siding the exhibition DISTORSIONS, AMY D Arte Spazio, 2014.