Using simple materials such as cardboard and paper, Budny makes small-sized objects, sculptures, and installations, as well as larger-format site-specific pieces. His practice reflects a profound interest in the question of form. The artist builds simplified models of real-world objects, as well as abstract, minimalistic equivalents of natural phenomena. His earliest exhibited works were the Advertisements (photo), made between 2002-2004, equivalents, made with various kinds of painted paper, of press ads or classifieds, devoid, however, of any textual content, thus reduced to pure visual form. Budny featured one of his Advertisements in the independent literary monthly "Lampa". During the same time, he made Books (photo) (2003), Discmen (2003), 3310 mobile phones (2003), always empty inside, reduced to the outer shell, but easily recognisable, as if the artist was trying to find their basic, defining form. Unfinished Letters (photo) (2003), in turn, were complex, geometric figures supposed to represent crumpled pieces of paper. Some of Budny's works seem to reveal the shapes of objects originally also made of paper, e.g. Map (photo) (2004), or Origami (2007). For the 2004 exhibition Prym at BWA Zielona Góra, the artist made Cacti (photo) (2004) built of openwork shapes alluding to the abstract relief on the gallery's front wall.
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Rain, 2004, corrugated cardboard, 95x115x50 cm, Music 1 (Concert), 2006, cardboard, 37x41x41 cm |
Budny also made an attempt to represent in paper and cardboard something that is seemingly devoid of form, virtually intangible and invisible. The cardboard forms of Air (photo) (2003) form a three-dimensional puzzle. The grey and blue elements represent air, two red ones - buildings in Warsaw and New York where the artist and his friend live. In other pieces, Budny created negative representations, reversing the material and immaterial, fleeting, dispersed (e.g. Rain, 2004, Empty Room, 2005). He also used cardboard forms to represent shafts of light bursting into a room, thus defining the boundaries of a space so construed, e.g. in Light (photo) (2004). In a series called Music (2006-2007), comprising eight sculptures, the artist referred to the tradition of artistic representations of music, using shapes alluding to artistic instruments, strings, or sound waves. In the show Concrete Legacy at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, Budny presented Untitled (Courtyard Composition) (2007) combining elements inspired by objects characteristic for the typical high-rise apartment-block estate - a wall unit, a hanging frame, a playground.
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Installation, 2006, site-specific installation at CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Untitled (Courtyard Composition), 2007, painted plywood, 200x300x110 cm |
The artist went even further in his striving to abstract form in the Installation presented as part of the In the Very Centre of Attention series at the CCA in Warsaw in 2006. The construction suspended from the ceiling emphatically revealed a space confined by the walls, and from above by the ceiling. Most recently, the artist reached for a more abstract conception of Silence, which he presented at Berlin's Johnen Galerie in 2007 as the contrast between an open space and one confined by a simple, minimalistic cardboard box.
Roost of the Homeless 2005
Nominated for the 'Views' Foundation of Deutsche Bank Competition at Zachęta in Warsaw, Budny presented his Roost of the Homeless (2005), reducing it to a purist, geometrical structure made of cardboard. He also presented a packaged set of objects of sentimental value belonging to his friends, which thus remained invisible, but present.
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Untitled (Borders), 2006, paper, 200x200 cm, Data Source, 2006, painted cardboard, 29 elements of various sizes |
Some of Budny's works reflect not so much reality itself as the modes of its representation. Area (photo) (2005) refers to schematic, digital simulations of terrain topography. For In Poland, That Is Where? at the CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, Budny prepared Untitled (Borders) (2006), Poland's contours cut out in paper, broken at places, as if opening to that which is beyond them. In the show Manipulations. On Economies of Deceit, in turn, the artist showed Data Source (2006), a visualisation, in the form of vertical cardboard boxes, of bar graphs commonly encountered in business newspapers.
More recently, Budny started an artistic collaboration with painter Zbigniew Rogalski. Together they presented at Zachęta's Mały Salon an installation called Projection (2006), which was more like an illusion of a projection. Budny's cardboard projectors only pretended to be projecting the images on the wall, which in fact were pictures painted by Rogalski. In their project the artists alluded to the long-discussed plans for building a modern art museum in Warsaw. For There Has Been a Change at Warsaw's Kordegarda in 2007, Budny and Rogalski planned to build a simple geometric portal on the gallery's front wall as an allusion to modernist architecture and the white cube, but the project fell through.
Author: Karol Sienkiewicz, October 2007.
Selected solo exhibitions:
- 2003 - "Michał Budny" - Galeria Raster, Warsaw
- 2004 - "Światło" - Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw
- 2005 - "Map" - Johnen & Schoettle, Cologne, Germany
- 2006
- "Instalacja" - as part of "W samym centrum uwagi", Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw
- "Projekcja" - Zachęta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, Warsaw (with Zbigniew Rogalski)
- "Bluebox" - Galerie Annex 14, Bern, Switzerland - 2007
- "Stille" - Johnen Galerie, Berlin, Germany
- "Origami" - Johnen + Schoettle Galerie, Cologne, Germany
Selected group exhibitions:
- 2004
- "From My Window. Artists and Their Territories" - École National Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France
- "Post_Modellismus" - Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna, Austria
- "Prym" - BWA, Zielona Góra
- "Jahresgaben 2004" - Westfaelischer Kunstverein, Muenster, Germany
- "At Home" - The Letterkenny Art Centre, Letterkenny, Ireland
- "Die Leichte Arbeit" - Kulturbrauerei, Berlin, Germany
- "Pluzzle" - galerie griedervonputtkamer, Berlin, Germany
- "Nowa Huta. Kunst aus Polnischer Sicht" - Westfaelischer Kunstverein, Muenster, Germany - 2005
- [...] - BWA, Zielona Góra
- "The Experimenter & The Art. Of Perception" - Artpool, Art Research Center, Budapest, Hungary
- "Spojrzenia 2005" - Zachęta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, Warsaw
- "Broniewski" - Raster, Warsaw
- International Biennale of Contemporary Art - National Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic
- "Revenge on Realism" - Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna, Austria - 2006
- "W Polsce czyli gdzie?" - Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw
- "Muzeum jako świetlany obiekt pożądania" - Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź
- "Architektura intymna, Architektura Porzucona" - Galeria Kronika, Bytom
- "Is It Better To Be a Good Artist or a Good Person?" - Raster at Rental Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
- "Manipulacja. O ekonomii kłamstwa" - Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Łaźnia, Gdańsk; Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw (2007),
- "Skulptur, Installation und Malerai aus Polen" - Bielefelder Kunstverei, Bielefeld; Kunstverein Nuernberg, Germany - 2007
- "Bodycheck". 10. Triennale Kleinplastik - Fellbach, Germany
- "Betonowe dziedzictwo. Od Corbusiera do blokersów" - Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw
- "Specied of Spaces and Other Pieces" - Hollybush Gardens, Londyn, Wielka Brytania
- "Black & White" - IBID Projects, London, Great Britain
- "Tu zaszła zmiana" - Galeria Kordegarda, Warsaw
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Advertisements, as featured in Lampa (no. 4/5, 2004); Advertisements, 2003, partly painted cardboard and paper, scotch tape, 140x200 cm back to text |
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Books, painted cardboard, scotch tape, 10 elements of various sizes back to text |
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Map, 2004, paper, 125x100, Unfinished Letters, 2003, cardboard back to text |
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Cacti, 2004, cardboard, corrugated cardboard, 63x20x54 cm, front wall of Galeria BWA Zielona Góra back to text |
Photos courtesy of Gallery Raster.