Accidental Pleasures (3) — Enthusiasts — Kuba Dąbrowski, Katarzyna Skorobiszewska, Paweł Szeibel
Having a Coke with You
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
Frank O’Hara, ‘Selected Poems’ (fragment)
summary of ‘Accidental pleasures’ The catalogue summarising the cycle of exhibitions ‘Accidental Pleasures’, which was held at the Small Hall of the BWA Contemporary Art Gallery in...
Accidental Pleasures (4) — A Tiger Has Almost Devoured Me — Bartek Buczek, Radek Szlaga The common exhibition of Radek Szlaga and Bartek Buczek shows at similar threads in their creation. These artists, using various means of expression, collect...
Accidental Pleasures (2) — Strolls in Melted Chocolate — Bańda, Markiewicz, Smandek, Szymanowska Melted chocolate is hot and burning; it can’t be touched unless it starts to become cold and hard. Its liquid state evokes the danger connected with...
Accidental Pleasures (1) — Conceptual Pleasures — Gayer, Grospierre, Skąpski, Sztwiertnia, Ziomkowska The starting point for the cycle of exhibitions, which was held at the small hall, the alternative exposition space of the BWA Contemporary Art Gallery in...
Three artists are invited to take part in another edition of the cycle Accidental Pleasures. Unaffected gestures which can transfer us into a gallery space result from the natural need of telling stories, a temporary impulse and from keeping the mind in the state of continuous oversensitivity. These tiny interventions put these artists in a row of the discoverers who note everything live, being overwhelmed by a total idea of experiment, and who undertake the effort transferring their own fascinations to the viewer irrespective of the high risk of defeat.
A LIBRARIAN WOMAN
Katarzyna Skrobiszewska entitled one of her earlier painting cycles: I Almost Don’t Go Out. From the reluctance to get out a fascination with what’s close can come, consisting in staring at objects up to the unsharpening. The new work came into being on the basis of a set of old books which she had found in her new old flat. She found there many surprising facts, notes on margins, dried flowers which had left stains, typographical errors, and untypical bookmarks. She treated the find with respect, non-invasively breaking it down into its constituent parts. Placing the selected sheets in simple frames, she prolonged the lasting of her own surprise, confirming its existence and explaining it in this way. She made the pleasure of her private investigation available on three levels: intervention of a reader, her own discoveries and the place for the viewer, leaving some subtle indications in the books which she had brought to the gallery.
A BOTANIST
For the time of the exhibition, Paweł Szeibel has changed one of the gallery rooms into a laboratory. Inspired with the skylight in the ceiling, he had designed two containers in which he placed flowerpots with some soil, joined together with a tube system. The walls put up with aluminium foil, the smell of soil watered once a day, the wetness and empty flowerpots, and all this has certain associations with illegal spaces arranged inside apartments. Provisional character and a weak chance to succeed with that weakly lighted horticulture can paradoxically evoke paradisical associations. Already in his earlier work, the artist has paid attention to the sectioned-off micro-cosmos of allotments which can become a substitute for an intimate retreat. A time-consuming attempt of originating a garden, the assumed appearance of sprouting plants in flowerpots, and tending the potted plants are doomed to failure. However, Szeibel decides to try; finding a few square metres of empty room, he sections off the Place.
A BOY
I am a follower of giving things in a simple and pleasant manner, says Kuba Dąbrowski. Photographing becomes for him naming the existing situations, and a prolongation of the state of immaturity. His peers are portrayed in their untidy apartments, casual clothes and during routine actions. He watches, analyses and picks out vivid details from what’s shallow, mechanical and bereft of colour. Looking from the outside, he unconsciously introduces storylines. Sometimes he tells on him; a hand, shadow or a shine in the mirror can be seen in the frame. His pictures are light and nostalgic at the same time, and function as a pop song or an American film.
In his new cycle he returns to boyish fascinations: he takes pictures of the television screen during the live broadcast of a basketball match and during an interview with a sports commentator, Włodzimierz Szaranowicz. He puts an album opened on a page with a picture of Michael Jordan on his desk; a ball and the gym shoes are lying beside.
Curator: Marta Lisok
