Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, born in Warsaw in 1885, died in 1939 on the day that Poland was invaded by Russia. His father was also an artist. 'Witkacy', as he became known, is mainly remembered in his homeland as a painter, novelist, and playwright; his photographs are only one aspect of his art. Witkiewicz was an intense and troubled man who believed that Western culture was decadent, degenerate, and undermined by the collapse of ethical and philosophical certainties; trapped between a decaying past and an uncertain future, he used photography, perhaps more than other art forms, as a way to explore his existential anxiety.
In Witkacy's view, the individual is essentially alone, confronted by the impersonal indifference of others. He deeply disliked those aspects of life that he regarded as collective and trivial, predicting in his writings on the theory of contemporary culture that they would destroy everything of real value in the world. His portraits, which make up the majority of the works, attempt to explain, or at least come to terms with, the enigmas of personal existence and the threat of its effacement. His personal despairing pessimism - not unlike that of Antonin Artaud - is the source of the dominant tone of the photographs, which is an almost unbearable tension between closeness and distance. There is madness and violence in many of his images, which may not be entirely unrelated to his occasional use of hallucinogenic drugs, but they also contain a lighter sense of absurdity and buffoonery.
This exhibition focuses on landscapes and the artist's self-portraits.
Invited to choose a selection of S.I. Witkiewicz's photographs for this exhibition and to accompany them with a work of his own, Mirosław Bałka has done so with characteristic enthusiasm and perspicacity. The Witkacy exhibition was made possible thanks to Stefan Okołowicz and Ewa Franczak, from whom the gallery has borrowed the original prints. It is largely because of their dedication that Witkacy's photographs have become more widely known in recent times.
Mirosław Bałka needs little introduction to Irish audiences as he exhibited at this gallery in 2003 and at IMMA in 2007. (He has also shown widely all around the world, perhaps most notably in 2009 with his How It Is installation at the Turbine Hall in London's Tate Modern). His work, usually made with industrial materials and such elemental things as ash, soap, and salt, deals poetically with issues related to history and memory.
Bałka's work in the show, Apple T., returns to theme of the Holocaust, filming a single apple tree in a field in the area of the former Treblinka death camp - a tree that was witness to all the horrors that took place there. Today it stands in silence. The apple tree - on of mankind's oldest references for the dichotomy of good and evil - takes on the burden of this question once again.
Opening: January 20, 6 - 7:30pm
Additional events
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January 20, at 5:00PM - Mirosław Bałka will hold a conversation with Declan Long on his own work and the work of S.I. Witkiewicz. There will be forty seats; doors will open at 4.50pm.
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February 23 lutego, at 1:15PM - Sheena Malone will give a talk on the life of S.I. Witkiewicz.
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March 9, at 1.15pm.- Barry White will give a talk on the work on Mirosław Bałka.
Opening: January 20, 2011, at 6:00PM.
Exhibition runs through March 23, 2011.
The Douglas Hyde Gallery
Trinity College
Dublin 2, Irlandia
Tel. +353 1 896 1116
Fax: +353 1 670 8330
www.douglashydegallery.com
Source: www.douglashydegallery.com