ANETA GRZESZYKOWSKABirthday
Exhibition
Introduction
Patricia Grzonka, art historian, Vienna
Patricia Grzonka, art historian, Vienna
Grünangergasse 1
1010 Vienna
20 Jan – 6 Mar 2010
read inGerman
After Aneta Grzeszykowska’s acclaimed presentation of two videos in Projectraum and Login (2008), we will be showing a comprehensive solo exhibition of the young Polish artist’s most recent films, photographs, and sculptures. Her work is marked by performative (self-)awareness processes through which she often explores the possibilities and limits of identity. “Birthday” is the title of her most recent film and is based on archival video footage. The theme is a child’s first birthday with the usual rituals, such as his first haircut, blowing out the candles, the usual birthday wishes. Grzeszykowska has altered the order of the individual episodes and added stop-motion animation, which in fact consists of retouched fragments of the picture. Put together, this intervention gives the original material a completely new context. At the same time a voice-over narration can be heard over the rituals of the birthday celebration, giving it an eerie touch. “In the context of the exhibition, private film footage becomes a universal experience, warning about how absolute and dangerous love can become.” (A.G.) The photograph “Untitled” and the sculpture “Devil” made of dark monochrome wool also have an autobiographical point of departure. “Devil” is the reconstruction of a doll Grzeszykowska was making as a teenager when she unintentionally injured her brother’s eye. The photograph displayed in a lightbox is a close-up of the now blind eye, revealing the unnatural spilling out of the pupil into the iris. This autobiographical episode is transcended through its aesthetic presentation, turning vulnerability into a universal theme. A group of monochrome “dolls” made of wool (like “devil”) is based on photographic archival material of Grzeszykowska and those closest to her. The figures are dressed in exact replicas of the clothes the artist wore as a child. The realism of the figures, however, is not literal. The monochrome grey gives them an impression of being eerily distant. “These dark figures look like three-dimensional black holes that have the shape of human beings. It would seem, that their materiality is an illusion, that they are only empty, hollow places which just a moment ago were occupied by living creatures”. (A.G.)
Photo
- Markus Wörgötter
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