Event date
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Podsumowanie
Obscurity lightened with a characteristic point light, starry skies and wilderness area visited by the representatives of the Aliens are the theme of these pictures.
Content
Szymon Rogiński (born in 1975) in his work is focused mainly on topographical document but he is not afraid to cross the border separating this photographic convention from the world of fiction and imagination. The turning point in the artistic work of Rogiński was a series of photographs entitled Poland (2003-2006), in which the artist set out to modernize and refresh landscape iconography. Landscape photography in Poland got stuck in the dead stereotype pattern of albums and tourist calendars many years ago. The rut of the last decades seems even sharper in the context of the great tradition of the genre: since the times of the 19-century masters of the camera: Karol Beyer or Awit Szubert, but also those working artistically in the 20th century: Jan Bułhak (author of the 'fatherland photography' on the Polish ground), Henryk Poddębski, Edward Hartwig, Paweł Pierściński or Adam Bujak.
Following the trend of the new documentary photography of the opening of the 21st century, Rogiński's photographs gamely exceed the old-fashioned iconographic patterns. The Poland of the transformation time in Rogiński's pictures is an obscure, disturbing, sometimes a grotesque state. Certain display frames resemble action shots from thriller movies but they also refer to the hallucinatory aesthetics of computer games. The visionary night views of Poland portray this country from a new, mesmerizing perspective. However, the night photographs turned out to be not the end but the beginning of the further quest of the photographer, who explored the space between the Baltic Sea and the Tatra Mountains, who explored the time between night and day. When developing the series of Polish landscapes by Lightness (2004-2007), Rogiński chose the daybreak as the only time of day which embodies the emotional climate and combines it with the tremendous effect of the title lightness. 'Daybreak, which I can watch when I do not sleep at night, always impresses me remarkably', says the photographer. Such impression is shared by the recipients of the art, watching the big-format photographs from the series.
Taken at night and dawn, the photographs smoothly advance towards the similarly extraordinary in climate pictures from the newest series entitled UFO (2007). Obscurity lightened with a characteristic point light, starry skies and wilderness area visited by the representatives of the Aliens are the theme of these pictures. In UFO the most striking quality is the author's interest in the prodigious - the Freudian category of 'Unheimlich' that is hidden in photography, such a technical and factual invention. Showing the invisible, unimaginable, showing what exceeds the frames of perception and what cannot be embraced by the mind, what can be only believed in, or laughed at, when believed... Similarly, as we look at the documentary photographs of Rogiński, here we also ask ourselves the questions - Is this all? Is it only this? What more can be seen? What will broaden the horizon of our cognition and experience? Looking at the pictures, we are coming closer to the border of the document and fiction, the border of what can be depicted. By stages, with unprecedented precision, Rogiński structures the effect of prodigiousness. Here, every detail of the picture provides balance and creates the atmosphere, gives meaning to its entirety. This work is just a reverse of the work done a hundred years ago by the photographers who photographed spiritualistic seances or paranormal phenomena, who chose technical manipulation, who decided to employ the aesthetic qualities of chemical and optical errors and refractions to build eerie images. Today, almost no one is impressed by the effects of technique that is slipping out of a photographer's control. Blurring of the emulsion, discoloration, over-exposition or simple photomontage are not to be taken at face value in the time of Photoshop. An incredible – metaphysical aura emanates from Rogiński's photographs. We know that also in the photographs of UFO the effect of the extraordinary has been achieved with technique but we cannot (do not want to) resist it. Unbelievably realistic, perfectly staged, composed, lit and produced photographs allure gradually. They spark a belief in the unexplainable, which exceeds the trivial technicalities of the medium. In this area, Rogiński's UFO is a statement on the belief in reality other than perceptible by senses. These landscapes are mystical and the spirituality (rather than sensitivity) corresponding to them is modern. The emptiness of the field visited by the Aliens (an Alien) is a proof of an event we have no chances of seeing until the moment when we - paradoxically - believe in it. In other words, if there is no will, nothing will be seen. Owing to the inspiration of the artist's long cooperating assistant who believes in extraterrestrial intelligent Life forms, the cycle brings us to matters which are not fantastic at all. One could even say 'existential'. If people can see the figure of Our Lady in the photograph of a window pane or a tree, if Jean Paul II can bee seen in the photograph of a fire, why not see the title UFO in the photographs of Rogiński? For, can we live without faith in the time of the new era? It is certainly not easy but - as Rogiński proposes - we can always have faith in photography. After all, photography does not lie. (text: Adam Mazur)
Exhibition in cooperation with The Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
Opening: February 26, 2009, 7 pm.
Exhibition will be opened until March 28, 2009.
Gallery appendix2
ul. Białostocka 9
03-741 Warszawa
tel. (+48 22) 670 12 02
Source: press release