After a period of absence at the Foksal Gallery Mirosław Bałka returns with an exhibition entitled Luftzug (German for draft). When he appeared in Foksal in 1990 it had a great meaning for this gallery. After the deaths of two great artists that were very important to the gallery, Henryk Stażewski (1894-1988) and Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990), Bałka started being considered one of the strongest personalities among the artists involved with Foksal.
During his ten-year-long collaboration with the gallery the artist presented his works in the framework of a few group exhibitions and realized five individual exhibitions: April/My Body Cannot Do Everything I Ask for (1991), 37,1 (1993), Pause (1996), a,e,i,o,u (1997) and sha / sza (1999).
Luftzug is an installation that interferes in situ with the space of the Foksal Gallery. The artist built a tunnel that joins windows located on the opposite walls of one of the gallery’s exhibition rooms and goes right through the space of this room. Bałka’s installation determines his personal relationship with this place and this place’s history. Luftzug was inspired by Tadeusz Rolke’s 1969 photograph We See You / My Was Widzimy which shows portraits of the founders of Foksal, placed in one of the gallery’s windows facing the courtyard.
The photograph appeared in a moment in which I was explaining Luftzug to myself and the picture became a starting point for me – Bałka explains. Attempts to present new artists, mainly from the younger generation, have been made for many years. This photograph however may be the perfect pretext to draw attention to the history of this place. I wanted to ask what is the present function of the Gallery and in what direction is it heading.
Bałka emphasizes that Luftzug is also a work about looking for oneself which is to encourage young creators to approach their creative activity with more boldness.
Many exhibitions focus too much on the attractiveness of the narrative dimension, letting the meaning slip away – Bałka explains. Today we are surrounded by objects that have many different functions, but I decided to create a simple object. The viewer might wander what’s on the other side of the tunnel, in order to pass to the other side you have to bend down, crawl. The fact that there is nothing additional to see on the other side is also symbolic. After all it is us on the other side of a mirror.
The form of a corridor, a tunnel often appeared in the earlier works by the artist, for instance in Soap Corridor / Korytarz mydlany, which was presented in Venice in 1993 or in the concrete tunnel Auschwitzwieliczka which was constructed in Kraków in 2009. Mirosław Bałka’s interference with Foksal’s space refers to a number of realizations by other artists which were presented at the gallery in the past (for example Koji Kamoj Draft / Przeciąg, 1975; Krzysztof Wodiczko Projection – a Room with a View / Projekcja – pokój z widokiem, 1995; Paweł Althamer Untitled/Air-Conditioning / Bez tytułu/air-conditioning, 1998).
Mirosław Bałka Luftzug
The Foksal Gallery
11.09 – 31.10.2014
Opening: 11.09.2014, 6:00 p.m.
Curator: Katarzyna Krysiak
Source: The Foksal Gallery, 10.09.2014
Transl. MK, October 2014