Event date
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Podsumowanie
Photographs from the "Millennium school" series were taken during the school summer holidays. For the artist, they represent a journey into his own past. Zielinski said that: visiting the classrooms of his former school, he found himself wandering down memory lane.
Content
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Krzysztof Zielinski, from the "Millennium School", silver dye bleach print (ilfochrome), 70x105cm, ed. 3 (+1AP), © 2007 Krzysztof Zielinski & Galerie Magazin, Berlin |
The Millennium School is a series of 44 photographs (of which a selection of 18 works is presented at the exhibition) taken at Primary School no 3 in Wabrzezno - an ordinary small town in northern Poland, where the artist was born and raised. Zielinski had focused on Wabrzezno before, in his most known series entitled Hometown, exhibited among the others at the 26th Sao Paulo Bienal (2004), the 1st Prague Biennale (2003). Now, after several years, he revisits his old haunts.Photographs from the Millennium school series were taken during the school summer holidays. For the artist, they represent a journey into his own past. Zielinski said that: visiting the classrooms of his former school, he found himself wandering down memory lane. Images from the past came racing back with the intensity of the taste of Proust's madeleine. However the artist discovered the old familiar taste anew. He remembered some of the objects from the past, but some - like several new items or colorfully painted walls - were entirely new. Thus, exploring the interiors of his old school, he was visiting places frozen in time, where the past intertwines with the present. In that sense, his journey concerns all of us. Infected with his own memories, the artist sees idyllically colorful interiors, beautiful, harmonious compositions. Empty classrooms, abandoned for summer holidays, resemble fairytale illustrations. My elementary education teacher burst into tears at the sight of the photographs - Zielinski wrote in a text message sent from Wabrzezno. That's where the secret lies. Our memory makes us believe the past was beautiful, so we remember it with nostalgia and affection. Memory is selective and often distorts our judgment of reality.
The Millennium School is the artist's first large project since his Hometown series developed 4 years ago. Even though both series arose from a similar need, their results seem surprisingly different. In Hometown, Zielinski engulfs the ordinary small town; he surrenders to its ugliness and dullness, so sad for visitors and so full of melancholy for him. The work became a sort of therapy against provincial town complex and inhibitions related to it, aiming at acknowledgment and acceptance of one's own origin and identity. In the Millennium School series, on the other hand, Zielinski returns to his primary school with great pleasure and childish enthusiasm. That is why the photographs have a completely different feel, brimming with colors and emotional intensity.
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Krzysztof Zielinski, from the "Millennium School", silver dye bleach print (ilfochrome), 70x105cm, ed. 3 (+1AP), © 2007 Krzysztof Zielinski & Galerie Magazin, Berlin |
Apart from its deeply personal main theme, the Millennium School series also explores historical and political background. Krzysztof Zielinski started his primary education in 1981 - that is only several months before the martial law was enforced, and completed it in 1989. When he received his school report, the Round Table negotiations had just finished. People who, like Zielinski, were born in 1974, are probably the last generation to have consciously experienced the communists' Poland reality. Today, we mostly agree that it was not a particularly pleasant chapter of Polish history and tend to experience a strange feeling of discomfort when our personal memories happen to contradict this view.
Primary School no 3 in Wabrzezno was built in 1962 as a part of the government's building plan called 'a thousand schools for the thousand years of the Polish state', which is why these schools were called 'millennium memorial schools' (Polish: 'szkoly tysiaclecia'). Compared with the standards of the 60's, the schools were modern, with spacious gym halls, comfortable classrooms and new equipment. Being a student at such a school was regarded as a sort of distinction.
Today, the splendor of millennium schools is long forgotten. The buildings have turned gray and their technological faults seem more evident than ever before. Almost nothing has changed within their walls for the last 20 years. The furniture and teaching aids have stayed the same. Only the classrooms have been painted in vivid colors, as if someone was trying to hide the passage of time and disguise their modest equipment. This urge to embellish the reality seems natural but does it make it appear more attractive?
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Krzysztof Zielinski, from the "Millennium School", silver dye bleach print (ilfochrome), 70x105cm, ed. 3 (+1AP), © 2007 Krzysztof Zielinski & Galerie Magazin, Berlin |
#Millennium School - the name refers to schools erected in Poland in the years 1958-69. The national schools construction plan was adopted in the form of decree issued by the General Secretary of the communist party Wladyslaw Gomulka and was designed as an response to the celebrations held by the Polish Catholic Church to commemorate the millennium of Christianity in Poland (1966). The program was a propaganda plan, with the new schools presented as a gift from the party to the nation, even though in the period of post-war demographic boom they were simply a necessity. The schools were built according to several standard layouts. They were usually two or three storey buildings constructed from prefabricated concrete, adaptable for military purposes: a lot of them had underground shelters or were prepared to be turned into temporary hospitals.
The Millennium School cycle consists of 44 photographs in the formats 70x105 cm (18 images) and 46x70 cm (26 images). Medium: silver dye bleach print (ilfochrome). Edition: 3 (+1AP). A selection of 18 works was presented at the Galerie Magazin exhibition in Berlin.
Krzysztof Zielinski was born in 1974 in Wabrzezno in northern Poland. He left the town at the age of 16, only returning to visit. His hometown, the motif of return and confrontation with his past and identity became dominating concepts in the artist's works. Zielinski was absent from Wabrzezno throughout the 1990's - the period of radical social and economic changes. Then, between 2000 and 2003, he created his well known series Hometown. Two of his subsequent projects, the Random Pleasures (2001-2004) and Seens (2006-2007) focus more on Zielinski's personal experience, with the documentary aspect largely disregarded in favor of the artist's privacy and emotions. The Millennium School (2007) is a mixture of both attitudes: the objective-like, documentary feel of Hometown and the emotional intensity of Random Pleasures."
2 February 2008 - 29 March 2008
Opening: 1 February 2008, 6.00 p.m.-9.00 p.m.
Galerie Magazin
Lindenstr 35, Berlin