Tremors: Multisensory Art in Gothic Space. Meet 7 artists exploring senses in their practice.

The eponymous shivering is the state that can be triggered by interacting with a work of art. It is also a physiological reaction of our body or skin in response to stimuli. It can be caused by a work of art, both physical and metaphysical. The exhibition title Tremors [Drżenie] (on view at the Baltic Sea Cultural Centre – St. John’s Centre in Gdańsk until the 30th of September) is corporeal and sensual as the featured pieces affect all senses. As such, one would typically associate interacting with an exhibition with the sole act of looking, but this time, our senses of smell and hearing are engaged.

Held in the historic gothic church that has served as the Baltic Centre’s seat since the 1990s, the show displays works that interact with the environment, enter into a dialogue with gothic architecture, and at times allude to the religious art of the past. Drżenia is an artistic story about the multisensory experience of all of that – architecture and individual feeling of space, and the fact that St. John’s Centre is not only a historic site but, more importantly, a place for sensual impressions.

Seven artists were invited to participate in the project. Their past artistic practice has examined the notions of various senses as well as human relations with architecture and their surroundings.

Zuza Golińska

A graduate of the Studio of Spatial Activities at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and holder of the scholarship awarded by the Ministry of National Education and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Her works have been displayed, for instance, in Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the Wrocław Contemporary Museum, the Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, and the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź.

Golińska explores the impact of architecture and space on a person, attempting to answer the question of how space affects our physical and mental condition. Her works combine sculpture and installation but she also designs architectural arrangements for museum exhibitions, often using recycled industrial materials. Golińska’s pieces aim at blurring the distinction between the aesthetic and functional forms. .

Her work Flower Drone is included in the exhibit. The large metal forms resemble flowers or vertically positioned drones with arms spreading out to the sides. But unlike drones, these forms do not hover over our heads – they stand still with their sizes and shapes making them seem downright dangerous.

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Anna Królikiewicz

Although she already graduated from the Painting Faculty at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, Anna Króikiewicz is still associated with the institution, where she runs a drawing studio. Between 2001 and 2003, she taught at several studios, such as the Art and Graphic Design at the Bilkent University in Ankara. Since 2013, she has run the course The Shape of Taste at the Poznań School of Form. She has participated in a number of solo and joint shows both in Poland and abroad, including New York, Istanbul, Ankara, Kiel, and Brussels. Also, a winner of awards for artistic and teaching achievements, and a holder of the City of Sopot scholarship.

Initially, she focused mainly on large-scale drawings, such as portraits. However, nowadays, she has been exploring the subject of taste, smell, and social context of eating. In 2011, she made the piece Flesh Flavour Frost – vegan ice cream smelling like saltly sweaty human skin. The artist’s works refer to food as a vehicle of memories, the smell of sweaty skin reminiscent of the sunny holiday by the sea. Królikowska is also a co-author, science editor and co-publisher of the monograph titled “Międzyjęzyk”, dedicated to the use of food as a contemporary art medium.

The piece presented at St. John’s Centre is titled Każdemu Ten Sam Ogień [To Each the Same Fire]. In the form of braided bread – one of people’s staple foods made in the fire, it explores how fire not only creates bread from flour and water but is also a powerful destructive force. St. John’s Church has been destroyed in the fire on numerous occasions, the largest one in 1945. So in its duality, fire can both create and destroy, bring clarity and rebirth, make its mark on bread and walls of the cathedral.

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Daniel Kotowski

An artist, performer, and a graduate of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts and the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology. He attends the doctoral school at the Gdańsk Academy of Fine Arts. His practice spans across different forms and mediums – from installation art, photography, and design to object- and filmmaking. He collaborates with Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Studio Gallery in Warsaw and Fabryka Sztuki in Łódź, and more.

His artistic practice is the point of departure for meditation on the ways of existence. He observes experiences and interpersonal relationships, as well as the way we are perceived by others. His works concern the mechanism of power over biology, social and linguistic communication, and social policy, focusing primarily on the categories of “completeness” and “incompleteness” alongside their ambivalence and hidden potential. The artist himself calls himself the indicator of incompleteness, inconsistent with the norm, as he is Deaf and does not use phonic speech. As such, he experiences the social strategies for normalising bodies and deeming them complete more intensively. In his performances, Kotowski exposes social expectations discriminating against the deaf as geared towards accommodating the hearing majority and the perception of a deaf person’s identity as incomplete in this context. He asks questions about belonging, equality, justice, and makes the audience reconsider these values from a new, unexpected perspective.

His exhibit work Oczy, które zbliżają się lub oddalają od człowieka [Eyes that get closer or further away from a person] focuses on the influence of the church’s architecture on our behaviour. Such an architectural space shapes our habits and the subconscious. For instance, the pews are positioned towards the altar, and so we look in this direction while ignoring our surroundings. Furthermore, the object’s shape refers to the concept of “deaf space” – the space constructed in the way that allows one to communicate in sign language, where all parties maintain eye contact with one another. This type of space promotes equality and amplifies empathy. Kotowski’s work resists hierarchy and champions mutual sensitivity. Eyes placed on the outside observe reality, while simultaneously observing each other on the inside.

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Marcin Dymiter

Musician, guitarist, vocalist, music producer, curator, and educator. One of the pioneers of field recording in Poland. He records noise-rock, minimal electronic, and improvised music. In his artistic practice, Marcin Dymiter creates sound installations, broadcasts, and soundtracks for films, theatre plays, exhibitions, and public spaces. He also runs sound workshops and activities centered around the idea of field recording. As a continuously multifaceted artist, he defies categorisation. He is the author of Field Notes, sound maps and educational music series titled Tracklista [Tracklist], and a band member of emiter, niski szum, ZEMITER, MAPA, and other ephemeral formations.

The piece fono_maswerk is an auditory interpretation of the space in St. John’s Church. Tracery (from the German “Masswerk”) is the name of the gothic decorative element that adorned the churches’s windows and walls. The piece manifests itself physically in the form of speakers and wires, but its essence lies within the sound. Just like tracery is made of many components, fono_maswerk is the collection of sounds from the long-term soundscape recording of the St. John’s Centre interior. It consists, among other things, of sounds related to the space itself and its workings, such as draught or echo, as well as the sounds of the equipment inside – the church bell, the servers, and other electric equipment.

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Paweł Biełajczuk and Ilya Sadowskiy

Since 2019, Paweł Biełajczuk (a florist) and Ilya Sadowskiy (a landscape architect) have been running a florist studio, implementing original and captivating ideas with nature being their main source of inspiration. By observing and drawing inspiration from their immediate surroundings, they also recognise the fact that plants can serve as amazing carriers of emotions. Their speciality is bouquets and compositions of cut flowers, but they curate their selection extremely carefully, looking mainly for natural, field, and garden flowers that can evoke childhood memories.

The installation Ogród czasu [The Garden of Time]  consists of four pillars embedded in wax, topped with burning candles arranged in the shape of a cross – a symbol of life, fire, balance in the universe and the forces of nature, whereas in the Christian religion  – the symbol of redemption, sacrifice, and hope. Lilies placed between the pillars with the heat of the candle flames dissolving the wax that covers the flowers, solidifying them into lacy shapes. Symbolism of flowers associated with the fragility of life and transience is further emphasised. While the smell of lilies is intensified by the warmth of flames. The idea behind the installation was the fragility of life and what remains thereafter.

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Karolina Hałatek

Graduate of the University of the Arts in London, Universität der Künste in Berlin, and Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 2014, Karolina Hałatek participated in the artistic residency in the Acme Studios in London organised in collaboration with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. She was awarded the artistic scholarship of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, and the grant of Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart.

Using light as a medium, Hałatek makes site-specific installations with the sculptural and architectural elements. One of her installations – Beacon – presented in Saudi Arabia in 2021 was included in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest LED structure in the world.

Myriad is designed specifically for the space of the chapels in the St. John’s Centre. It simultaneously illuminates the space and transforms it. Verticality of the piece highlights the soaring nature of gothic architecture. The ornaments and sculptures of St. Catherine and St. Michael the Archangel encourage metaphysical reflection. Meanwhile, this site-specific art installation is a synthetic structure, precise and unadorned. The white colour of the light embodies purity and contains the entire colour spectrum. Myriad literally invites the viewer to look at this interior in a new light.

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The exhibition Drżenia [Tremors] can be viewed at the Baltic Sea Cultural Centre – St. John’s Centre in Gdańsk until the 30th of September.