Contemporary Arts Center
Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center
for Contemporary Art
44 E. 6th Street,
Cincinnati, OH 45202
513 345 8400
Artist Details
I deal with art in public space - specifically installations, sculpture and urban designs (Warsaw, Oslo, Belgrade, Yerevan, Fribourg, Lublin), and this is usually the existing place which is my point of departure. Recently my favourite topics have been in most cases history and ideology ? the elements which influence our identity. I have been trying to approach, update, ridicule or just remind outdated layers of the past by adding something new and contrasting - distinct from their original style or function. Of course I do not behave as an objective spectator as I am myself to a certain extent a product of reality I live in.
Most of my works consist of two main elements. One is historical, traditional, already fixed or closed in its form, second one more contemporary, open, playful, interactive. For example one of my public space projects suggested a change of the function of out-dated monuments which served the communist propaganda to commemorate Polish-Soviet brotherhood in arms. I wanted to refer to the grim monuments with their closed form and distorted massage and I ?changed? them into big toys ? carousel, slide and swing. The installation ?Swing? (September 2008) was based on a contrast between monumental bronze Berling Army soldier and a tiny individual swung by a big hand of history. My aim was to highlight historical complexity, to show relation - individual versus historical machine.
My installations often have a playful form, which does not mean my motivation is just to make fun or jokes. Art and play have something in common - art projects and toys are models of reality. A child plays with a toy but at the same time treats it seriously. I take into account that it depends on attitude of a receiver, whether my projects are taken seriously or playfully. Both approaches and elements are not to exclude one another.
*Courtesy of Kamila Szejnoch
born
27.04.1978 Warszawa, Poland
Education:
2006-2008
Dutch Art Institute, Enschede, The Netherlands
DAI public Research & Practice in Art
1999-2005
Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Department of Sculpture
Audio-Visual Space Section
Art in the Public Area Section
1997-2003
Warsaw University
Department of Journalism and Political Science
Institute of Social Policy
Additional Information