BWA Contemporary Art Gallery in Katowice

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 Katowice, had been the redefinition of the notion of pleasure and the discovering of its multidimensional character. The investigation of that notion is an area of continuous and diffuse movement, without a clearly defined direction of development.
The first edition of the cycle, which was connected with the delights of signatures, deciphering and rewriting, assumed that the investigated pleasures should be indefinite, entangled, anarchic and untameable phenomena. The lack of the overall hierarchized thinking or the binding with the idea of unity resulted from the very title of the exhibition, which assumed mobility and ephemeral character of the show, thereby disabling any structural arrangement.
The invited artists have left trails for the viewer, which can be followed or rejected. The leading role is played by the loss of control of a work, its form and meaning. All the works are opening spaces for investigation, being an invitation to spin an own tale, or a staring point. Their ephemeral character and loose connections between them have left areas to be filled by the viewer depending on his/her individual needs.

For Roland Barthes a text was a body built from erotic relations and full of pleasures waiting to be discovered by a reader. ‘The pleasure of a text is the moment in which my body sets off to follow my own thoughts’, this is a phrase which appears in the book to which Grzegorz Sztwiertnia refers in his video film presented at the exhibition. The protagonist of the story is an old librarian, a lunatic walking in his pyjamas though the empty library. He is slowly reading fragments of the book with a tensed voice. He is stumbling over certain words, and repeating them. He is flowing through the text, without trying to comprehend it, as if pronouncing a complicated incantation.

The cycle of tautological films by Łukasz Skąpski resembles haiku poetry, including its characteristic conciseness, fascination with the natural world and aesthetical minimalism. As such it exceeds interpretation, leaving only elusive feelings in the viewer. The artist, fascinated with the philosophical thought of the East, is watching the surrounding world, recording what he sees. In his simplified series of meteorological notes, he doesn’t even bother to make any comment. In the context of his simple statements, ‘it’s high’, ‘it blows’, ‘it’s cold’, each experience can be aesthetical. Skąpski stops the frame of a many a time watched film, enabling to follow one’s own sensibility, and to see the depth inherent to boredom, and fullness inherent to simplicity. His video recordings don’t use any hidden code or cipher, just like haiku poems explain nothing and don’t need any explanation.

Works by Michał Gayer, which are shown at the exhibition refer to his strategy which is based on rewriting history and reading it anew, using fragmentary information, in new contexts, different from the popularly accepted ones. The process of deciphering his works is drawn outside the gallery and fulfils in a private space of the viewer.
The artist put a handwriting-like text ‘Bloody Juliette’ on the facade of the gallery. The inscription refers to a little known history of Helena Mateja, an alleged confident and Gestapo agent, a Silesian femme fatale. Passers-by could associate the inscription with a banner or a signboard of a night club. As Gayer writes, ‘Whenever I watch press cuttings, it happens to me that I cannot compose pictures and information together, as if one of the sources was false. Sometimes I think that I care neither about the article nor the opinion on Bloody Juliette, and that I don’t believe in her guilt. Instead, I can imagine her as a star without any problem. I would like to place the name of Bloody Juliette above the heads of passers-by in the form of autograph, especially for them.’
Another work by Michał Gayer is a prototype of the typewriter made of precisely smoothed carton. The keyboard consisting of soft and noiselessly bending buttons which resemble skin texture is not marked with letters or digits. Its function consists in enabling a kind of nonsense invisible writing. Thoughts are to flow, according to the artist’s assumptions, from under the fingers pressed keys through a paper tube to a closed container. Along with the machine a fan system appears, working in a certain rhythm and creating an inscription ‘The Code’ which shows on the edge of visibility. The encouragement to enter a direct contact with objects is an attempt of omitting the trap of grasping the whole thing, not exceeding one’s own ‘now’, and focusing only on a fragment or detail. Opening at fragmentary grasps of impulses is a kind of reaching ‘before’ a language/order.

A similar sensual potential which can force the viewer to reach in the first reaction for the key of touch is generated by perforated paper rolls of Erwina Ziomkowska, in the context of which pleasure becomes identical with destruction. During monotonous piercing of the surface the form is abandoned in favour of the very action of piercing. Introducing the matter into the processes of change, the artist enables the viewer to take part in the process of destruction and follow her private initiation. Absurdity of a situation in which creation is linked to destruction delights with its repeatability and simplicity of gestures, and the monotony of long-lasting appearance as well. In a simple gesture of interference, the artist makes that paper, usually associated with something smooth and having certain stiffness and strength, takes over the qualities of quite another object and starts to resemble rather a fabric. The imperfection of the perforated rolls is attracting, but without the author’s commentary; the reception is limited to aesthetical associations. Thanks to the use of such a tactile grammar, the way for complementing the stiff language which is not congruent with experiences becomes open.

Mikołaj Grospierre’s photographs from the cycle ‘Embassy’ present empty interiors, the reality of which we would like to check with our own hands. The uncertain status of those photographs causes in the viewer the will to put one’s hand deep into each frame, finding repetitions, little shifts, mistakes and manipulations, and the need of telling stories about a place. In the lifelessness of presented objects and rooms the anecdote leads to nowhere. The distance from the motive, lack of the starting point and making an impression of strangeness become important, while what’s caught is just of secondary importance. It’s a randomness which traps one’s look and captivates it with the promise of an opportunity of unpunished watching. Grospierre attaches great significance to order. He imposes on himself the limitations which define his creation. Like in Bechers’ conceptions, the set also plays the key role in Grospierre, being a constituent of a phenomenon, and often enabling to notice it at all. In the case of ‘Embassy’ it enables erring through deserted offices, traversing unfriendly corridors, oppressive rooms, cubbyholes and cold staircases, as well as peeping into wall units that had been emptied in a hurry.
The first edition of ‘Accidental Pleasures’  is deeply rooted in conceptual strategies. It gathers stories which are not fully unequivocal, but rather hermetical, isolated, and not enabling to be noticed at first glance.

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