Twenty artists from all over the world are participating in the 2nd edition of the Biennale de Stonefield, which will take place in a private mansion in Perreux. The artists include Khaled Dawwa - a Syrian sculptor and political refugee - and two Polish artists: Sara Rodowicz-Ślusarczyk and Klaudiusz Ślusarczyk.
The theme of the biennale, “On the other side”, refers to the work of Alfred Kubin, the writer and painter known as the ‘Austrian Goya’. Kubin illustrated the books of Dostoyevsky, Gogol and Poe. He was author of the novel On the Other Side, which contained a utopian vision of a dream-like universe that inspired many artists and philosophers such as Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin and other contemporary creators such as Bruno Mantovani or Krystian Lupa.
During their research on our constantly changing modern civilisation, the biennale’s curators asked a question about Kubin’s position as seer of the final fall. Sara Rodowicz-Ślusarczyk’s work, three photo-series titled Hiccup, 100 Titles and Folds, are a documentation everyday surroundings.
The artist writes:
The question about the other side comes with the concept of unconsciousness and the Lacan topology of subject and object. In Lacan’s psychoanalysis, an object, causing desire in the subject, cannot be placed inside, in intimacy and narcissism, but on the outside of a subject, in the ‘not-me’. This is an object, which has no sustainable depiction, and its rapidly appearing presence wakes up feeling of incredibility described by Freud.
Klaudiusz Ślusarczyk will show photos from his How Go cycle, the title of which, with its wrongly-used wording, refers to mistakes or errors. The whole presentation refers to the process of remembering and its potential interruptions.
Working in a photographic laboratory, he destroyed film full of private experiences. While making copies of the damaged film, Ślusarczyk undertook research on the topic: how something unpredictable, but on the other hand strongly real like human mistakes, shows up through the imagination, just like ‘the other side’.
Jacques Adam, curator of the Biennale de Stonefield is a psychoanalyst, a former student of Jacques Lacan and a member of the Psychoanalyst EPFCL School in Paris. He tries to deal with the problem of representing thinking about subjects in visual arts, in the same way as psychoanalysis and Lacan’s ideas. He has shown his works in La Maison Rouge, the Antoine de Galbert Foundation, and in BAM Musée des Beaux-Arts in Belgian Mons. Adam has led seminars in Warsaw on Lacan’s psychoanalysis titled ‘Why does art exist more than nothing?’ and lectures titled ‘Unconscious – that’s politics’, thanks invitations from The Polish Forum of the Lacan Field.
Sara Rodowicz-Ślusarczyk is an artist and psychoanalyst. A graduate of the Faculty of Graphics in The Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, she studied clinical psychology at SWPS University. She acquired her knowledge about Lacan’s psychoanalysis in Paris. Rodowicz-Ślusarczyk lives and works in Warsaw. Since 2008, she has presented her works in Warsaw and Tokyo (Striped House Gallery and Moscow Lounge in Tokyo). She also co-creates scripts and concepts for theatrical spectacles, performed with the Couscoukuskus group in Poland (including CSW in Warsaw, Centrum Praktyk Teatralnych ‘Gardzienice’, and DPT Wigry) and in Japan (X-Cai in Tokyo).
Klaudiusz Ślusarczyk is a director, dramatist and visual artist. He graduated from the Faculty of Arts at Monash University in Australia. He is a lecturer in the Faculty of New Media Arts at the Polish-Japanese Institute of Information Technology in Warsaw. Past works include: A Sleeper Wakes (short story, 2016), 51.3 [sleepwalker] (a series of chorographical workshops, 2015), Tahiti is Approaching (photo exhibition, 2014), J&H (performance, 2012), and Performance Project 09102009: Pan (performance, 2010).
Other artists taking part in the Biennale de Stonefield 2016: Clara Aubery, Yaël Braverman, Juliano Caldeira, Christophe Cantoni, Micheline Catti, Khaled Dawwa, Ghislaine Escande, Fred Hommel, Gilbert Lascault, Romain Laveille, Ramuntcho Matta, Léonor Matet, Vannina Micheli, Rauchbach, Aurélie Thevenot : LLELL, Claire Valverde, Elisabeth Adam, Alexandre Adam.
Culture.pl is a partner in the Polish artists’ participation.
Biennale de Stonefield 2016
Bourgogne, Puisaye, Perreux
France
4th–25th September 2016
Curators: Elisabeth and Jacques Adam
Sources: biennaledestonefield.wordpress.com, materials about artists edited by AS, 9 September 2016