Katarzyna Majak, Im_Placement
Recalling a nostalgic vision of a family orchard, Katarzyna Majak moves a work of memory, nostalgia and reflection into the space of Hungarian Platan Gallery. A special dance performance by Hungarian Batarita dance company accompanies the opening night in Budapest on the 28th of March, 2012
The exhibition is opened by Gabriella Csizek, curator of the Dom Mai Manó Hungarian House of Photography, with a special dance performance by Batarita.
The exhibition at Budapest’s Platan Gallery employs multimedia elements, photography and an installation. Katarzyna Majak constructs a work which evokes her childhood experiences. For Majak, the theme of childhood becomes a potent symbol of our relation to time. Finding oneself in an orchard can be a return to family life and infancy, but also to a mode of being immersed in eternity. The piece combines sound (pranayama breathing of hatha yoga) and portrait photography with the installation of suspended tree seedlings. The trees are hung in the space of the gallery in a way that gives the impression of flight and bending under gusts of intense wind. One photograph depicts the artist herself calmly seated on a couch in the interior of a home.
Krzysztof Jurecki thus comments on the image in his review article of the piece entitled "An apple, an orchard and dance"
A simple and unassuming pose, and a gaze directed straight at the camera. The advantage of this work, which has the characteristics of a digital images is its simplicity - the simplicity of the interior, of the hand’s gesture, and of a face devoid of any emotion. The gesture of holding an apple is the most significant, and at a first glance seems to carry a symbolic meaning. Perhaps it is a symbol of the original sin, or maybe it refers to mediaval iconography frequently employed in sculptures of Madonna holding the Infant Jesus and an apple. (...) In the end, the only plausible interpretation is the idea that an apple is equivalent to an orchard or its "remnant"
The artist herself provides her deliberations on Im_Placement in a catalogue note from Wozownia Art Gallery’s exhibition, asking when an orchard ceases to be an orchard and takes on the existence of a human being whose memories are tied to this particular place. She says, "This orchard defines me, and I do not wish to be defined. This orchard makes me rooted, and I wish to wander. I would like it to be as intangible as breath".
The Im_Placement show was previously presented in the Wozownia Gallery of Toruń, in Słubice’s Okno Gallery and was also shown during the In-spiracje festiwal in Szczecin.
Katarzyna Majak is a visual artist, a writer on photography, and a curator with a PhD from the University of Arts in Poznań, Poland. Majak is a recipient of the scholarship from Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Aspen, Colorado, and the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (2011), she is also a finalist of the 2011 Critical Mass in Portland. Katarzyna Majak was an artist-in-residence at the WomanKraft Gallery in Tucson, Arizona and participated in the "Florida - First Contact" project at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. Majak’s works were selected for Photographers: network Selection 2010 and 31 Women in Art Photography, an exhibition held in New York in July, 2011. Her works have been exhibited in Los Angeles, Łódź, New York, and Poznań. Katarzyna is also one of the editors for Fotografia quarterly – a Polish photomagazine. She is represented by the Porter/Contemporary Gallery New York, and the Ego Gallery in Poland.
The exhibition opens on Wednesday the 28th of March, 2012 at 7:00 pm and is on until Friday the 18th of May, 2012
Platan Gallery
Budapest, VI. Andrássy út 32.
Source: Polish Institute in Budapest