The Family Allotments on Warsaw’s Kinowa Street are located in the city centre, but they remain free from the hustle and bustle of the city and are untouched by the urban changes happening around them. It is in this setting – a ‘no man’s city’ – that the Realny Obszar Działań (Real Action Area) project was born. It’s a space dedicated for artists which welcomes artistic events of all sorts: art shows, performances, discussions. This is where Gizela Mickiewicz presented her work in an exhibition entitled Pełny Odcinek (Full Episode) in 2014. She took an interest in the hierarchy and structure of the process of creation. She investigated each stage and their degree of importance in relation to the entire course of all the short but important parts leading to its completion.
The series of sculptures from Mickiewicz’s individual exhibition Mass and Mood was an attempt to give emotions and mental states a type of form. The artist used art to try and present all that's happening inside us on a daily basis. Using different shapes, textures, and sizes, she wanted to materialise feelings and atmosphere. In her installations, Mickiewicz combined various substances to better illustrate conflicting emotions or situations. The inspiration behind the artworks featured in Stereo Gallery came from a social event she attended, which she describes in the following way:
A small group of people grew louder and larger with time. For a long time I watched the way people were greeted upon their arrival and how the atmosphere of the meeting gradually changed, depending on who came. I noticed that while naming these changes and talking about them, I used very specific words for something that isn't tangible – I reached for specific descriptions of solid matter. I decided to play a little game with myself and began to exaggerate these subtle changes. The people entering were almost like shapes with their respective properties: some ugly and sticky like jagged cotton candy, others proud, spread out, under whom one might willingly sit. For example, one person was concave on each side. Together they all formed the shape of the meeting, strange and in so many ways heterogeneous. I remember it primarily as a visual and perceptible experience.
Mickiewicz wanted to externalise and materialise a condition that is often difficult to express even with the use of words, and she attempted to transfer it to the sphere of tangible reality with the help of abstract forms.
Feet, 4 Walls & Head – a two-person exhibition featuring Gizela Mickiewicz and Roman Stańczak – opened in the autumn of 2015 as a result of a collaboration between Galeria Stereo and Bureau, a New York gallery. Despite being from two different generations, the sculptors both use everyday objects and materials. In his work, Stańczak focuses on the physicality of a given object, while Mickiewicz creates abstract pieces alluding to the spiritual sphere; she searches for the metaphysical potential of art. They converge at the point of material transformation. The Feet, 4 Walls & Head exhibition highlighted the similarities between the artists’ work, an affinity seen through shapes and textures. She often uses materials usually associated with the construction industry. A series of sculptures created by the artist for the Mickiewicz-Novotny joint exhibition in Gdańsk City Gallery provided an alternative narrative for these construction materials. Mickiewicz showed an entirely new side to substances previously known to viewers, but their purpose can be volatile. The cycle of works shown in Gdańsk entitled Time of Entry points to the potential use of the material itself, a potential that is limitless at any given moment. The artist played around with the properties and features of the individual materials – she combined delicacy with resistance, plasticity with endurance. Some of the works include a distorted painted concrete fabric, a light installation of wire and plexiglass, and a wall stuck together with bricks, glass blocks, transparent concrete, and hay. The exhibition of works by Gizela Mickiewicz and Jaromír Novotny opened in November 2015. Most of the pieces presented were minimal and austere; the artists wanted to achieve a common point of balance.
Playing with raw materials can have a confusing impact on the audience – when a seemingly familiar object like a carpet or a curtain is made of a rough and inflexible material such as concrete it contains an element of surprise. All of the titles of the works from the Gdansk exhibition refer to the future – a future of these materials that is uncertain and elusive, since currently their function still hasn’t been dominated by form and structure defined by content. That is why Mickiewicz didn’t create specific objects that – in a futuristic vision – could be used for everyday use, but opted for surrealism. Abstract installations allow for open interpretation and do not guarantee any single vision of the future. Minimalist art pieces designed by Gizela Mickiewicz could also be seen at the Next Now exhibition, which opened in the spring of 2016 at Arsenal Gallery in Białystok. Later that year the artist held a three-month residency in New York City's Triangle.
In the summer of 2017, Mickiewicz, along with 9 other artists, took part in the It Is As You Think It Is exhibition at the Arsenal Gallery. The project engaged creators whose work has a common feature – it is often not what it seems to be, hence the main theme of the exposition. It was an attempt to look at seemingly familiar things in a new, refreshing way; to play with how reality is interpreted and to revaluate one's perception of it.
In 2019 Gizela Mickiewicz was chosen to participate in the 9th edition of the Spojrzenia (Views) competition organised annually by Deutsche Bank Poland and the Zachęta National Art Gallery. The competition is aimed at young artists – but not novices per se as nominees must be active in the field of art and have had some substantial achievements in the field. Winners of the previous editions include Tomasz Kowalski, Dominika Olszowa, Liliana Piskorska, and the art collective Kem, as well as Mickiewicz herself. In the second stage of the competition an international jury decides on one winner.
For this occasion, Mickiewicz created an 8-piece sculpture entitled Samotność Widoków (Loneliness of Views). The installation doesn’t have a specific centre. According to the artist’s vision, the work cannot be seen in its entirety – it cannot be grasped with just one look. The transparency of the materials which were used allows for a great number of possible perspectives. Mickiewicz once again tries to affect and shape the surrounding space.
Author: Agnieszka Sural, 15.09.2014, transl. GS, 22.09.2014; updated: HSz, May 2019