Monika Wiechowska, "Landscape #2 (Bronx, ZOO, New York, USA)", 2007, photo courtesy of the artist
The photographic series by Monika Wiechowska which are presented at Kordegarda was created a year ago in the United States of America. The artist was on residencies there, to shortly thereafter settle permanently in New York City. The pictures seem to document her gradual submergence in the (chiefly urban) landscape of the United States. The image they create is utterly subjective, marked by the author's sensitivity and life experience. We will not find postcard images here like the Statue of Liberty or the 'Hollywood' sign in Los Angeles, instead, Wiechowska is interested in 'no-go' neighbourhoods, forgotten areas (Coney Island, New Jersey) whose time has passed, even though its traces are still to be seen here and there; untypical images of well-known cities which, were it not for the hint offered by the title, we would probably not recognise.
Most of the pictures are from New York City. The Calvary Cemetery diptych shows the New York skyline as seen from the huge cemetery in Queens. Tombstones in the foreground, and behind them the Manhattan skyline. Calvary is the largest and at the same time one of the oldest of New York's necropolises - there are many ornately sculpted tombstones there. Wiechowska captures its poorer section, situated closer to the highway - the tombstones are simpler here, but disturbingly similar in form to the skyscrapers in the background. The method of representation used gives the picture a vanitas-style quality. The double image further emphasises a sense of visual and metaphorical symmetry.
Wiechowska employs a similar measure - showing a familiar city from an unfamiliar perspective - in Landscape #11 (Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles, California, USA) , giving the viewer a unique opportunity to see L.A. through the eyes of the main character of David Lynch's cult classic Mulholland Drive.
Another picture captures a Queens neighbourhood, Flushing Meadows, where the famous US Open tennis tournament takes place. Again hardly a bombastic vista, as if from out of reason - a snow-covered landscape looming blurrily beyond a thick glass wall.
Landscape #2 (Bronx ZOO, New York, USA) takes us to another 'no-go' area, Bronx. Winter, a picturesque view, a wrecked fence, and beyond it a fragment of an aviary. The complete absence of either people or animals gives the picture an eerie feel. Another part of Bronx, Sheridan Avenue, was photographed by the artist at the same time of year. We see walls of shabby buildings, and in the foreground an escarpment with wild vegetation covered by bizarre icicles. The viewer's contemplation of these beautiful natural creations is disturbed by the question, emerging from subconsciousness, about what kind of disaster brought them into existence.
The lushness of vegetation in the centre of a big city and the traces of decline evident in architecture heighten an effect of unease and alienation. The artist has chosen to blow up this picture to the size of one of Kordegarda's side walls. The sheer scale of the representation makes an impression on the viewer, and the interior's architectural divisions additionally frame it, heightening the tension. Opposite this picture referring to history and the eternal conflict between culture and nature, Wiechowska has placed a like-sized photograph entitled Landscape #5 (VLA, New Mexico, USA), showing a huge antenna-telescope amid a harsh desert landscape. We do not know whether this is a futuristic vision of Earth communicating with alien civilisations, a robot-controlled post-catastrophe world without cities, or perhaps a Moon probe? In her American wanderings the artist got to New Mexico, where she photographed the Very Large Array astronomical observatory in the desert, a fulfilment of a highly disturbing future myth (futuristic/technicised nature). Landscape #9 (Fragment of Hoover Dam, Nevada, Arizona, USA) conveys a similar mood - evoked by a contrast between a huge technological construction (which seems deserted) and the power of pure nature.
The third picture chosen by the artist to be blown up gives us a better understanding of the idea of this exhibition. The image of snow-covered garden partitioned by the ornament of a frosted fence transports us to the unreal world of a winter tale. Is this non-central New York again or perhaps some provincial town in the Midwest? And again the title reveals the truth - it is Szczecin, the artist's home town. The incorporation into the photographs of subjective elements, borrowed from the private (sometimes intimate) sphere, and their juxtaposition with the evident, indifferent, subject to public scrutiny, characterises Monika Wiechowska's creative method. Her pictures are never impartial or stylised documents. The artist photographs the extant reality, but her pictures tell stories, speaking about that which is beyond the frame, discovering related (universal) stories recorded in the sceneries of New York, Los Angeles, Szczecin; or Georgia (the country) and Chorzów, where she worked earlier.
Wiechowska recently showed a selection of pictures from the series in question at the Galerie Fons Welters in Amsterdam under the title When the blue moon rises, an allusion the 'once in a blue moon' idiom denoting extremely rare events usually preceded by a dramatic prologue, as unusual as a blue moon visible after a volcano eruption. Of similar mysterious and beautiful phenomena speaks the artist's exhibition at Kordegarda, presenting pictures from the North American series in a new selection and arrangement. The sense of vague unease arising from communing with the mystery or history present in these succinct photographs will surely accompany the viewer too.
Monika Wiechowska - born in Szczecin, 1976. Studied at Gerrit Rietveld Academy of Art and Design in Amsterdam (1995–1999); School of Visual Arts, New York (1998); Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (2000–2002). Residencies: LMCC, New York, USA (2007–2008); ISCP, New York, USA (2006–2007). Lives and works in New York.
Curator: Magda Kardasz.
Gallery Kordegarda
Krakowskie Przedmieście 15/17
00-071 Warsaw
Tel. (+48 22) 620 02 31
Fax (+48 22) 620 02 31
link*www.zacheta.art.pl*http://www.zacheta.art.pl** **