the way they are (2019)

the way they are (2019)

Yorkshire Sculpture International  @ Bothy Gallery, YSP
Associated Matters Group Exhibition

‘Sculpture changes the space it inhabits’ and ‘Anything can be sculptural’ Phyllida Barlow, Yorkshire

Sculpture International

At the same time, the space changes how sculpture inhabits. Both space and sculpture are to be experienced together and neither is more important than the other.

My sculpture engages with mundane objects and invisible energies such as magnetism and gravity. It has become my daily routine to find objects in markets, streets or skips. A new way of being will be breathed into old materials that are often passed onto me – rustic, damaged and dysfunctional. These are composed into kinetic contraptions or small islands of tiny occurrences that magnify silence, occupying space. I am concerned with dualism of perfection and failure, sometimes deliberately disrupting flawlessness to include a sense of failure, and other times an accidental failure results in an unexpected consequence. My work will never be complete and is always a continuing process. It is also important to know when not to make choices – let things be, reserving a certain fragility and fortuitousness.

‘knowing is not my business, not knowing is.’ (Krzysztof Kieślowski)

the way they are is derived from my ongoing research with the Polish film director Krzysztof Kieślowski’s archive. I visited Sokołowsko, a small village in south-western Poland, where Kieślowski had spent a part of childhood while his father recuperated in a sanatorium for tuberculosis. The very cinema Zdrowie where he used to peep into films through a ventilator is still in the town and the sanatorium is now turned into the art institute. I have been fortunate to have access to the vast archive of his photos, sketches and documentaries, as well as discussing their culture and life with people such as the film curator Michal Oleszczyk and the painter Bożenna Biskupska.

Kieślowski has deployed questions that humankind continue to ask today through his works which are cynical yet obscurely playful, delivering various interpretations for each viewer to choose one. I have always been fascinated by his observance in concurrence and synchronicity of life, and his way of applying time and space. How he devises emotions and situations, with unique visual and aural applications, for me, is sculpture.

Special thanks to Bożenna Biskupska and Zuzanna Fogtt at In Situ Contemporary Art Foundation.