The works, created across Asia between 2008 and 2012, were made on the streets of Shanghai, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. As reviewer Paulina Zarębska-Denysiuk remarks, Gilewicz's art is constantly undergoing change as he opens his practice up to new media, while maintaining a focus on painterly tradition. He has moved on from his mimetic projects of 2005, in which he placed canvases set against the park background that served as their subject. Today the video camera takes on an increasingly significant role as it documents the effect of this "intrusion" into the public space.
The artist-intruder observes the world from afar, like a voyeur. And yet, he maintains a painterly aspect in the composition of his frames. As Zarębska-Denysiuk writes, "the artist appears in the role of the Other. He reveals the potential, diversity and strangeness of an unfamiliar world, which, in spite of appearances, does not succumb so easily to globalisation". Gilewicz observes this reality, weighing its various elements, such as commercialisation, social customs and cultural paradoxes. He appreciates the painterly qualities of that which is far-off, that which is so different from our world, from the brightly coloured phone booths of Taipei merged into the Taoist backdrop to the billboards that line almost every block. At the same time, his work is an intrusion into the public space, as he interferes with the frame by setting up canvases and posters about that mimic the background, which startle passerbys and the viewer as they topple and reveal Gilewicz's trick, as in the video Intrude (2008). One of the most effective moments of this technique is the shot of the city skyline - a still-frame that is disturbed by the impression that the buildings are toppling over. In fact, they are merely reproductions of the skyline on canvas, set up in an ideal proportion to the frame.
In the video Shanghai (2008) he sets up a painting studio around a trash receptacle, dabbling paint on the worn, splattered walls as people come and go surveying what others have left behind - an illustration, perhaps, of the idea of one man's junk and another man's treasure. Upon watching the video, the composition of the colours do indeed seem to take on an artistic angle, blurring the line between trash and aesthetics.
Marco Antonini, in ArtPulse Spring in 2012, wrote that "Gilewicz’s projects can be considered a form of context-driven creative labor split between cultural criticism, institutional critique and genuine social involvement". His works in public space use otherwise isolated forms of creating art, incorporating intriguing elements to draw people in and show a new side to established art forms. He often casts himself as subject, taking a variety of roles that challenge preconceived notions of who he is, as a man coming from Poland in the 21st century's global society.
Gilewicz's show is accompanied by an exhibition catalogue in Polish and English, which includes texts from international curators and experts including Charles Schultz (art critic and managing art editor at the Brooklyn Rail, New York), Jeanne Truong (independent curator and writer based in Paris), Kenichi Kondo (Associate Curator, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo), Maria Brewińska (Curator, Zachęta National Gallery of Art) and Shanghai-based critic Biliane Ciric. The exhibition will go on to other Polish venues in 2013: the BWA Gallery in Zielona Gora and Zona Sztuki Aktualnej Gallery in Szczecin.
Wojciech Gilewicz (born 1974) lives and works between Warsaw and New York. His media are painting, video, photography and installation, and his practice extends to site-specific projects as well as performance actions. Gilewicz gained recognition for his photographic series Them, begun in 2002, of double self-portraits that represent the artist and his doppelgänger - at times even his alter ego. He has exhibited at major art institutions around the world, including the Foksal Gallery in Warsaw, the SculptureCenter in New York, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, the National Museum of Contemporary Art / Changdong Art Studio, Seoul, and Aspen Art Museum, Colorado. His video works have been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Reina Sophia National Museum in Madrid and the Foksal Gallery in Warsaw.
Wojciech Gilewicz - Intrude is on view at the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology in Kraków between the 9th of November 2012 - 20th of January 2013. For more information, see:
manggha.pl
Editor: Agnieszka Le Nart
Source: Press information
For more on Wojciech Gilewicz and to view his video works, see:
www.gilewicz.net