27/08-09/09/2012
exhibition
Piotr Grabowski
Retaliation
- Anxiety, disorientation, suspicion and speculation – these are the reactions provoked by Piotr Grabowski. Upon entering the exhibition entitled Retorsje [Retaliation], one is faced with a collection of the artist’s films, texts, objects and gestures. Grabowski’s exhibition is however not just a show of his works, but a certain situation – enigmatic, out of the ordinary, evoking an intellectual and emotional discomfort. According to the artist convenience is a price worth paying for freedom and conditions allowing for critical analysis and experiencing art in an active way.
- In the language of diplomacy retaliation is a form of reprisal for, reaction to unfriendly actions undertaken by the other party. At the exhibition the artist performs his act on the viewers and counts on retaliation on their side: interpretation effort and contradictory emotions.
- Piotr Grabowski escapes any simple form of artistic categorisation. Not attached to any specific media or style, he does not hesitate to use any means of artistic expression available. The only permanent parameter of his artistic practice is his unpredictability; experimenting constitutes his modus operandi.
- Grabowski’s works usually take the form of complex installations planned as a crossing field of messages and a meeting point of various levels of reality. A classical work of art is an attempt at organising our views and imaginations of the world. Grabowski’s artistic output however does not follow the classical tradition. It is rather closer to anti-artistic approach stemming from the DADA tradition and Fluxus movement. The work of art undergoes deconstruction. The artistic situation once again becomes multidimensional, equivocal and risky, just like the reality which offers place for contradictions and inconsistencies. Even if the viewer expects from the artist a clear message, distinct discourse dressed up in a metaphor, Grabowski is always willing not to comply with these expectations. The discourse of Grabowski’s art is ambiguous, develops “in between the lines”, between the language, picture, object, the artist’s narration and viewer’s emotion.
- At the exhibition entitled Retorsje [Retaliation] Grabowski uses figures of control, power and its usurpation, he uses acts of appropriation, impersonation, camouflage and aggression. Some of his gestures are performed in a sphere of the language and text while others – in the virtual space. Yet another ones take the obtrusively material form.
- The artist provides data. At the same time he does not deliver the key to its structure; the viewers themselves have to take the effort to interpret it. All we can do is to catalogue the said Retaliation.
- The exhibition offers the following:
- → forged signatures of famous people (Wisława Szymborska, Benjamin Netanyahu, Mikhail Khodorkovsky), autographs engraved in metal plates – the work of the artist who trains himself in the appropriation of other people’s competences, authority and power;
- → a floor mosaic made of concrete, glass and wood elements, representing the classical military splinter pattern camouflage ("Splittertarn"). An abstract pattern developed during the interwar period in Germany was later successfully used on uniforms and military vehicles by Wehrmacht, Bundeswehra as well as many other army units in the whole world. Military camouflage is a product of civilisation which tries to erase its shape, to blur its own contours, to impersonate nature so as to be able to more effectively spread and use culture-preconditioned military violence. Interestingly enough, in case of "Splittertarn" this act of usurpation is committed by the means of a non-organic, geometrical pattern which resembles the elements of modernist architecture rather than nature-based motives;
- → a video recording of a Wildlife Park session, a computer simulation game involving playing in building a zoo. Grabowski sets extreme parameters: in his virtual zoo there are no cages or fences for animals. Nobody feeds the animals – and only wolves are bred there. The end of the game is inevitable: hungry predators start attacking visitors, the game ends in a disaster, the viewers change into victims of the creatures which were to be the highlight of this zoological spectacle;
- → a minimalist video with a complex text on the borderline of poetry and sensational prose;
- → an electric fence surrounding the whole exhibition. This type of fences are usually used to keep animals within their strictly specified pasture area. In Grabowski’s installation the electric wires mark the borderlines of the exhibition discourse space and outline the area for the viewers to move freely.
- In between the lines of the elements of the Retorsje [Retaliation] installation mentioned above the following terms and notions are revealed: system, anarchy, politics as aesthetics of power, blurred borders between various reality orders, dissembling, constant role changes, dynamic relations between the imagined, the virtual and the real, together with the equally dynamic relations between the artist and the viewer.
- Curated by
- Stach Szabłowski
The project was implemented with the financial support of Bank Pekao.
Media partners
Today at U–jazdowski
