Izabela Ołdak — Singing over bones — announcement
Exhibition opening: 29th June at 6 p.m.
The artist welcomes anyone who would like to come to the gallery a couple of days before the opening of the exhibition and join in creating the pattern (27–29.06).
The gallery walls are quite empty. The floor is overlaid with a thick, meticulous drawing. It takes the artist, Izabela Ołdak, a few days to prepare. She sprinkles a mixture of ash and pigment, arranging it into an elaborate pattern that is unfolding in her mind. She paints on stones, builds mosaics from paper scraps, covers gallery space with a thicket of paper cut-outs, paints on leather or lays sand mandalas, as if she were trying to build a makeshift nest, which is becoming bigger and bigger with every hour of her patient work. Her actions could be described as rituals of temporary settlement, evoking the oft-shunned sense of order, which makes one keep on unremitting pattern-making.
This time, Ołdak's ornament grows in the manner of a tropical forest, rapidly and uncontrollably. Her confident hand sprinkles the floor with colours, which blossom into offshoots, meanderings, spirals, stems and twigs. The artist plays the role of a shaman, who restores the primeval order of nature with a gesture of unhurried sprinkling. She works in a squatting or kneeling position, merging with the space for a couple of days, aquainting herself with each centimetre of the appropriated space.
A two day observation of the growing artwork allows viewers to complete a long journey back to the origins of culture, to the time when patterns had mainly protective functions. All magic charms, knots, plaitings, labyrinths and processions of dancers were related to hope, caught in the entangled pattern of evil powers, thus keeping them under control.
During the exhibition, Ołdak's tale about coming into being and coming to an end, based on the temporary geometry of a spiral, is dispersed and fades away. The only thing that remains of it is the messy colourful dust that leaves the gallery on the soles of the shoes.
curator: Marta Lisok
