Wojciech Gilewicz: Cuboids, E22, Rockayay
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Wojciech Gilewicz Cuboids E22 Rockaway Wojciech Gilewicz Cuboids E22 Rockaway Galeria Foksal, Warszawa 2015 able as an art space – a nondescript loading dock Table of content / Spis treści Introduction on East 22nd Street in Manhattan. At the same time David A. Goldfarb he paints a series of canvasses assembled into blocks that mimic the form of the loading area, and he Introduction David A. Goldfarb 3 fi lms his parallel painting in his atelier and on the Wojciech Gilewicz is an artist based in Warsaw street. His mother, Danuta Gilewicz, wonders what Painting Th e Expanded Field Sara Reisman 5 with a foot in New York and a penchant for travel he is up to and why he is repainting the same can- throughout Europea and East Asia. His work – tak- vasses solid colors over and over again during a peri- E22 Todd Shalom 12 ing the forms of painting, installation, performance, od of three years. His painting of the actual building interventions in public space, and video – focuses seems to be of no consequence. He looks like he Disappearing Act: Two New Videos not so much on production of objects, as on the could be the building’s superintendent, painting the process of production and consumption of art. It loading zone many times before he is confronted by Wojciech Gilewicz Ela Bittencourt 16 highlights the fi ne line between the day job and the by the landlord, who doesn’t seem to know what to art world. It asks what makes an object “art” when it make of the action. Th is rough moment of recogni- List of Works / Spis prac 23 could easily be mistaken for something so mundane tion signals the end of the street performance. Th e as to be beyond notice. It shifts the burden from the action on the street can only take place when the Wstęp David A. Goldfarb 24 dissemination to the reception of a message, chal- artist is invisible, unrecognized like the quantum lenging the audience to recognize the artist at work particle that is displaced at the instant it is mea- Malując rozszerzone pole Sara Reisman 25 and to identify the art in front of their noses. sured, like the messiah who ceases to be the messiah Th is volume presents three video projects com- at the moment at which he is named. E22 Todd Shalom 27 pleted in 2015 – Cuboids, E22, and Rockaway – of- But the canvas blocks persist in his mother’s fers two new critical assessments of Wojciech Gile- private space. She proposes that she can paint Znikające działanie: dwie nowe prace wideo wicz’s work and one creative response. Sara Reisman and repaint them as decorative objects in her own 3 of Th e Shelly and Donald Rubin Foundation, who home, giving them their own meaning, amid the Wojciecha Gilewicza Ela Bittencourt 27 has been a curator of public art in and for the City clutter of everyday life, beyond their connection Bios / Biogramy 30 of New York, examines Gilewicz’s challenging of the to the building in Manhattan. Gilewicz deploys boundaries of public space and its relation to pri- his mother alternately as a stand-in for himself and vate, intimate space in her essay, “Painting the Ex- as an object of portraiture in Cuboids (2015) and panded Field.” Ela Bittencourt, a writer and fi lm Rockaway (2015). In the seeming simplicity of her critic who divides her time between New York and existence she bears a certain similarity to the most São Paulo, reads the roles of performance and au- famous mother in American art, that of James Mc- tobiography between the acts of painting and fi lm Neill Whistler’s Arrangement in Grey and Black, making in her essay, “Disappearing Act: Two New No. 1, inspired by the minimalism of Japanese block Videos by Wojciech Gilewicz.” Todd Shalom might printing, and yet as in the case of Anna McNeill be seen as a poet who thinks like a visual artist, or Whistler, there is a very vibrant life force beneath alternately an artist who uses poetry as his medi- the austere façade. Not unlike Ms Gilewicz, Ms um, or whose infl uences come as much from the art Whistler traveled – from the American South to world as from the literary tradition. His response New York, and even to Russia when her husband, here to E22 (2015) brings to the surface some of his a prominent engineer, was off ered a position de- own experience of the cultural and aural history signing the St. Petersburg-Moscow railway line. Ms of the East Gramercy block where Gilewicz’s inter- Whistler had to develop a strong sense of self-reli- vention takes place. ance when her husband and three of her children In E22 Gilewicz records himself repeatedly died of illness in Russia, leaving her to raise off - painting a wall a diff erent solid color on each oc- spring of considerable accomplishment despite her casion, in a location that is completely unrecogniz- modest resources.* Ms Gilewicz appears as the icon of a European immigrant in America, but her son’s with an imitation, painting a very precise imitation Painting Th e Expanded Field desires: he wants to take a walk in the moonlight, intimate portrait reveals an underlying dignity and of each fl aw in the public facade, and mounting the but there’s no moon, so he draws it. He has nowhere complexity that may not be apparent from the label fl awed painting directly over the fl awed surface. Th e Sara Reisman to walk so he creates a path. Gilewicz’s Revitaliza- “immigrant.” Separated from her fi rst husband, she surprise for the viewer is that they may see some tions (2007) function similarly, in that he repaints reinvented herself in a new country, built a career, mundane scene that they pass by every day and sud- the deteriorated and broken details of outdoor pub- raised two successful children, and soldiered through denly notice that it is not the cracked surface they Wojciech Gilewicz’s artwork is best described as lic spaces, along the surfaces of the built environ- the aftermath of hurricane Sandy on the Rockaway thought it was, but a very skillfully rendered paint- painting in the expanded fi eld. My fi rst encounter ment, to give them the appearance of restoration, Peninsula of Queens, New York. Like Ms Whistler, ing of the cracked surface, not “reality” but “art.” In with his artwork was in the form of a video titled making the world look like he thinks it should. Like she takes an active interest in her son’s art mak- Cuboids Gilewicz shows, with a Polish sense of the TR Warszawa (2005) which documents his process Harold, Gilewicz creates what he wants to see, but ing, and Wojciech Gilewicz’s use of his mother as absurd reminiscent of Roman Polański’s Two Men of painting a large scale replica of the foyer wall in Harold’s worldly drawings take place within the a character, an alter-ego perhaps, is a powerful trib- and a Wardrobe (Dwaj ludzie z szafą, 1958), that the Teatr Rozmaitości in Warsaw. Gilewicz paints confi nes of a children’s book, whereas Gilewicz’s ute to her strength and contribution to the artist’s three large canvas-faced blocks can be exalted as art what is behind the canvas onto the canvas, so that paintings function as interventions within dynamic Polish-American identity. It is an acknowledgment when exhibited in a sculpture park next to similar the image of the wall blends into the surround- landscapes of the real world. of the kind of labor on which art rests. By the end black monoliths, but passed over as irrelevant when ing architectural details of a nearby column and Making his way across the globe, Gilewicz has of E22, she becomes not only a character but a visual painted beige and installed next to heat pumps and molding adjacent to the painting. Focusing on the cosmetically restored public works in places as far fi gure, part of an arrangement of red and white that transformers behind a building. Gilewicz’s experi- unremarkable details of the foyer wall, within the fl ung as Bat Yam in Israel, Shanghai, Sanok and she has painted, a Polish immigrant eating her soup in ments in fi gure and ground challenge a commonly site of the theater itself, Gilewicz’s canvas becomes Wrocław in Poland, Ivano-Frankivsk in the Ukraine, front of a Polish fl ag, bottles of Kikkoman soy sauce held assumption about art and its function – that art seamlessly integrated with the interior architecture Paris, Taipei in Taiwan, and New York City, engag- and colorful paper napkins disrupting the frame. depends on context – but also, conversely reveal that of the theater lobby. Just as the painting begins to ing with the distinctly diff erent urban contexts and Gilewicz in Revitalizations (2007) reproduces fi gure and ground are themselves social constructs. disappear into its surroundings, he rotates the can- aesthetic textures of each city. Identifying locations things in the built environment, replacing reality vas away from its initial position. A contrasting, of decay, where paint is peeling away from the fa- surreal painting suddenly appears in relation to its cade of a building, where masonry has begun to 4 context, producing a distorted view of the lobby crumble, and graffi ti can be reinterpreted as abstract 5 wall. Gilewicz’s repositioning of this image of the painting, Gilewicz assumes the role of a mainte- wall and existing architecture reveals how much nance worker who is simply doing his job, touching of an illusion painting is, as well as the illusionistic up the surfaces of the built environment with his power of art in general.