Marek Glinkowski
Polish School, Poland, 1st Half of 20th Century
Reality effect. Photography and video from Poland. Exhibition of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
Reality Effect is a presentation of a dozen projects which, shown in a single space, trigger off the real-artificial dialectics. All of the presented works are based on the so called real image, which, in optical terms, means the image produced by actual rays of light passing through a converging lens. However, the manners in which such an image is used can differ greatly, as can its interpretations.
The exhibition's title refers to Roland Barthes's 1968 essay in which he analyses the function of the detailed account in the realistic novel. The antiquity, Barthes points out, believed that the real had no chance to meet the probable, that is, representation. Modernity revises this view, creating new rules of representation. A specific detail in a description becomes a sign reduced to but two functions - the reference and the signified. The sole reason a given object is mentioned in an account is that object itself. Barthes calls this the referential illusion, which produces the reality effect.
All works selected for the exhibition are based on the real image. Potentially, therefore, they all could produce the reality effect - and yet they do not. Paradoxically, the effect is less strongly used in works rooted in the photographic tradition, which are those by Pawel Pierscinski, Wojciech Wilczyk, Ireneusz Zjeżdżałka, Ewa Andrzejewska, Jan Zyszkowski or Jerzy Lapinski. Their productions are rooted in the topographic document tradition, but they mute the reality illusion, if only with their use of monochromatic material. But does this cause them to lose the credibility of probable images? The use of black-and-white photography seems to be a clear signal that we enter some kind of symbolic territory. Even though, reality is represented in all its detail, the selected fragment is clearly imparted a structure that does not exist autonomously. This is achieved via very specific compositions - some very symmetrical, others with the foreground blown out, the horizon line elevated or lowered, or the geometry of details highlighted. This emphasises the intentionality of the representation and thus supports the individualistic character of the statement. This framing is unavoidable, but there exist means of highlighting its existence and function, like those mentioned above, as well as of hiding it, which can be seen in a number of works taking advantage of our predilection for naturalised representation. I think here of the works by Monika Wiechowska, Maciej Stepinski, Aneta Grzeszykowska and Jan Smaga, Marcin Chomicki, Lukasz Skapski, Julia Staniszewska,
Marek Glinkowski or Alicja Karska and Aleksandra Went. Paradoxically, without formally emphasising the individual elements, these (colour) photographs and films use the reality effect in a perverse way. They use the illusion of reality, creating a sense that it is not the point at all, that meanings are beyond the represented objects, that details do not add credibility to the narrative, which actually unfolds elsewhere. It should be sought in the social sphere, in the world of the mass media, in the field defined by critical art.
At the same time, extremely importantly, all of the presented works are 'views' of Poland - its material culture, socio-economic transformation, cultural stereotypes embedded in the social consciousness. Each view is not only individual but also exploits a different tradition of representation. Contemporary references to 'homeland' photography or 19th-century photography, the documenting of industrial or local architecture, are confronted with statements loosely referring to the topographic document in which public space or architecture are but pretexts for making more general statements. The works of the artists using classic, blackand-white photography enter in an interesting dialogue with the productions of those employing photography and video in utopian projects or in their critique of the contemporary society, the strategies of representation or the museum discourse.
The exhibition, therefore, speaks of real images and their seductive power, but also of the different strategies of using them. We are all their slaves, as the
Twozywo group's poster "The Modern Apparatus of Coercion Is the Welfare State's Indication reminds us". But that does not mean we must give up the possibilities and pleasures this slavery provides.
curator Karolina Lewandowska
Exhibition is co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage.
Zacheta National Gallery of Art
pl. Malachowskiego 3
00-916 Warsaw