TURN OF EVENTS — opening new exhibition 26th of February
Exhibition opening: 26th February, 6 p.m.
Mateusz Sadowski supervises the interpretations of his works. He does not allow them to grow upwards and outwards. He objects to exaggerated clarification of contexts, supplying nice anecdotes or picturesque multi-layered analyses. He renounces references to old masters. He will not have his videos tamed by using set phrases and common categories – this is strictly forbidden.
He is equally rigorous when it comes to his working conditions — he hardly ever leaves his place. This apathy and almost autistic stagnation are supposed to be factors that determine his activeness. His flat is his natural habitat, he roams it with confidence and sensitivity, like a watchful hunter. Here, he knows every single object, crack on the wall, bulge in the carpet. It is his place. This is where he is looking for the nucleus of reality. He shows great respect for the private life of objects. When filming them, sometimes he allows these objects to appear as they are, another time he reorders them into a new arrangement.
He is in a permanent state of decided detachment from everything that has not been made with his own hands or pinned down with a focused camera lens. The world of his films hatches only when it is being processed and filtered by his careful eye. The results of these observations are administered to the audience in low doses, at a slow pace, as if Sadowski is uncertain to what extent he can reveal the result of his advanced aesthetic research.
The focus of his interest is the over-sensitive and the over-protective, stemming from boredom and staying too close to things, becoming acutely sensitive to their rhythms and textures. Perceived from the corner of his eye, blurred shape-places become struck by dramatic events and major catastrophes — avalanches, earthquakes, thaws and floods. All this happens within an area measuring a dozen or so centimetres, because Sadowski’s experiments with cardboard, rubber and plastic do not require him to reclaim plenty of room. He does not need vast space. He works in small areas, on tiny segments of reality, which encompass its most basic manifestations, as if he is trying to pinch the smallest possible bit of the world. In his video, a plain grey carpet turns into a misty thick forest, and pillows become icebergs breaking off a glacier. A piece of cardboard changes into an impenetrable wall, and thin rubber straps are transformed into murderous snakes that devour everything they find on their way.
For him, the important element of these micro-observations is observing the creative process itself. In this purposeful floating around the studio there are moments of stupor and moments of activity, but Sadowski does not separate one from the other. All ambiguous states that he experiences are allowed to flow in his works side by side — from anticipation, to emerging, familiarising, training, exposition, longing, situating and finally, to tenderness. Here is the revealed mechanism of the experiencing tools which have been created with no specific purpose in mind – Sadowski leaves them for confused and enchanted viewers to appropriate and use in any way they wish. However, they usually lack the courage to do so.
Curator: Marta Lisok
