Aneta Grzeszykowska, frame from "Headache"
The Polish video artist joins an international group of artist curated by Ruba Katrib at New York's SculptureCenter in drawing upon the surrealist sculptures of Alberto Giacometti. In Paris she joins the Body Language exhibition, a survey of the body in 21st century photography
A Disagreeable Object fills the exhibition space of the SculptureCenter in New York with the works of contemporary artists who set their objects against the developments of capitalism and technology much in the way that surrealist art operated in response to the developments of art and industry of its time. The opposing dynamic between interior and exterior space is also examined, along with the nature of the uncanny within the scope of art today. Current themes include the economy, the body, the home and technology.
Polish artist Aneta Grzeszykowska presents her 2008 video work Headache, a sort of dance pantomime which tells the story of the self-destructive impulses of the body, the story that reaches its conclusion with a deceptive happy end. It uses an original take on choreography to create an existential moment of a surreal play with the body, its form and its appearance. The subject moves in time with music - which is a variation of chosen fragments of works by composer Krzysztof Penderecki. Seemingly disjointed body parts reach out of an abyss, repeating the themes begun in her earlier video Black, the artist's own naked body going through a series of changes in a black void. It is in this blackness that the illusion comes to life and the body is given the status of an object, making the act of dismemberment believable. Cleanly chopped, each limb performs a separate task, taking on a life of its own with an almost animalistic mystique, the hand pulling the hair, the head spitting on the hand, the hand slapping the head, the four limbs ganging up on the head until it is exhausted, only to be pulled up to rejoin the rest of the body. The head is a passive victim of violence incapable of defense against limbs that are in revolt, an analysis of self-hatred and punishment which can also be understood as a metaphor for the ambiguous relationship between a sovereign and its subjects, for power and submission.
Headache was first shown at the Raster Gallery in Warsaw and has since been shown at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis in 2011 and at the 2012 Paris Triennale. Most recently, Aneta Grzeszykowska has been working closely with her partner Jan Smaga, sharing intimate moments of the couple's domestic life captured in the camera lens. The Private Archive series, exhibited earlier this year at the Raster Gallery in Warsaw is currently on show at the Swiss Cultural Centre in Paris, along with the work of Paulina Ołowska. Her Alphabet performance piece, which surveys a legacy of language, feminism and history. The Body Language international group exhibition follows the imagery of the body through photography of the 21st century based on a selection of the Winterthur Fotomuseum's extensive collection.
A Disagreeable Object is on show between the 15th of September - 26th of November 2012 at the SculptureCenter in New York. For more information, see: www.sculpture-center.org
Body Language is on show between the 14th of September - 6th of December 212 at the Centre culturel suisse in Paris. For more information, see: www.ccsparis.com
Editor: Agnieszka Le Nart
Source: Press information