Witek Orski I would prefer not to talk about this One of the first pieces I intended to make for this carried with it. For one reason or another, I decided not to specific shade I was looking for, I perused a sampler at Exhibition view, 2019 exhibition was a very large photograph of a field of make the piece, but I still wanted to use the phrase in the a shopping centre. One particularly bold hue stood out, rapeseed spreading across the horizon. The inspiration exhibition title until I realised that the name of this yellow alarmingly yellow with a certain rotten quality about it. came from an old wives’ tale that admonished children flower in English is rape, conjuring up the phrase, ‘Don’t Numbered 1021 on the RAL colour chart, it turned out not to look at a flowering field of rape (rzepak) in the look at rape in the sunshine’. I couldn’t very well use that that this particular shade of yellow was generally referred sun. They say that a person can be blinded by looking as the title of my upcoming exhibition. After some time, to as RAPE YELLOW. Don’t look at rape in the sunshine. at bright yellow rapeseed in the stark glare of the sun. I the only element that remained of my initial concept was enjoyed the suggestion of visual violence that this phrase colour. The colour yellow, the colour of bile. To select the I would prefer not to talk about this Exhibition view, 2019 I would prefer not to talk about this

Hebel-do-zdzierania-drzazg-i-wiórów, 2018, photograph (archival pigment print), 150 x 100 cm I would prefer not to talk about this, 2019, photograph (lenticular print), vinyl sticker, 60 x 100 cm I would prefer not to talk about this

Sous les pavés, 2019, carrara marble, 20 x 16,5 x 6 cm I would prefer not to talk about this

Untitled (paint), 2019, photograph (archival pigment print) 150 x 50 cm I would prefer not to talk about this

How much does it weigh, 2018, photograph, (archival pigment print), 40 x 50 cm I would prefer not to talk about this

Untitled (skin), 2019, photograph (digital print) on synthetic leather, steel I would prefer not to talk about this

Untitled (foil), 2019, photograph, lightbox, PCV window frame I would prefer not to talk about this

Postproduction, 2018, photograph, lenticular print, 120 x 120 cm Meadow Meadow rescues Rosa Luxemburg’s herbarium from oblivion, which is stored at the Central Archives of Modern Records in Warsaw. The archive comprises seventeen (After Rosa Lusxemburg’s Herbarium) identical school notebooks containing an amateur herbarium, and one additional notebook devoted to the classification of plants and minerals. Each page of the ink-pigment print on archival paper herbarium, created between 1913 and 1918 – mainly during the activist’s frequent incarcerations in Wrocław, the Wronki Fortress and Berlin, among other locations – 2018 features a plant specimen or its part alongside a German or Latin name, place of origin and the date it was collected or received. Legend has it that the herbarium, with margins containing notes with no direct relation to botanic descriptions, could also function as an alternative record in cipher of Luxemburg’s political philosophy. Bringing her herbarium closer to viewers, Orski concentrates on highlighting its formal characteristics: plant and paper textures, handwritten notes and drawings with which Luxemburg supplemented missing parts of plants. The artist also seeks to decipher the political dimension of the activist’s herbarium. GALAXY - A Studium of Polish Postmodernism, photographic installation, aprox. 150x100 cm., 2018, exhibition view: Gdańska Galeria Miejska

A collection of ceramic cups with details of polish postmodern architecture from the late 90s and early 00s, presented on a backdrop image of highly polluted winter sky over Warsaw. / exhibition view: Gdańska Galeria Miejska GALAXY - A Studium of Polish Postmodernism, photographic installation, aprox. 150x100 cm., 2018, exhibition view: Gdańska Galeria Miejska How to Eat Meringue, photograph 100x125 cm., 2018 A photographic interpretation of a television event from the early 2000’s when the first lady (wife of a popular social-democratic president) thought polish people on savoir-vivre of eating a meringue cake. How to Eat Meringue, exhibition view: Gdańska Galeria Miejska No More Tears, photograph 100x125 cm., 2018, exhibition view: BWA Warszawa No More Tears, photograph 100x125 cm., 2018 exhibition view: BWA Warszawa Untitled (Touch Screen), photograph 100x66 cm., 2017 Untitled (Touch Screen), photograph 100x66 cm., 2017 exhibition view: BWA Warszawa Sad River in Which the Moon Swims, lenticular photographic print, 100x125 cm., 2017

The title of this piece was taken from a song by Krystyna Krahelska, who – in 1937 – posed for the most widely known monument of the Mermaid of Warsaw (sculpted by Ludwika Nitschowa). Krahelska was a scout, poet and songwriter. She was a nurse during the Warsaw Uprising and died on its second day. In the piece “The Moon Swims on a Sad River”, the image of Krystyna Krahelska has been made unreal by an artistic transformation. The artist combines post-photographic work (using graphic software) with key techniques of one of the most prominent Surrealists, René Magritte. These two aesthetics appear to be surprisingly similar. The end result is an atmospheric scene depicting a woman and a river, which exposes the processes behind the creation of photographic images. Sad River in Which the Moon Swims, lenticular photographic print, 100x125 cm., 2017 exhibition view: Museum of Modern Art (Warsaw) Rejuvenation, photographic The classic Polish landscape photographer, (Ziemie Odzyskane), together with a vast sea exceptional Polish features. An adequate on the other hand, it is a gloomy reflection installation 6 x 6 x 6 m., 2017, Jan Bułhak, was a tireless promoter of the border in the north and wide mountain ranges epilogue to such a farce is the fact that, once upon what was done to the Polish landscape exhibition view Center for genre in its patriotic, even nationalist, version. in the south. In a 1938 book manifesto, entitled Native Photography was reissued in 1950, after the democratic transformation. It was Contemporary Art (Warsaw) Due to the fact that he made his works Fotografia Ojczysta (Native Photography), Bułhak replaced all nationalist and romantically subjected to modular unification (by means of during a particularly tumultuous period, he he revealed the creative philosophy of his spirited images of meadows, villages and i.e. prefabricated materials such as setts), spatial used landscape photography as a purely photography, the glory of the homeland and cemeteries of Vilnius with photographic tributes segregation by fences, noise barriers, guard political tool. His images of “homeland views” in service to the nation. He also described the to the industrial achievements of communist rails, landscape and architecture being turned constituted a significant patriotic voice in the methods and techniques that constituted the Poland and the deeds of the Red Army. He into potential advertising spots for billboards. debate on Polish borders undergoing changes ethos of a native photographer. One of the most quietly replaced “the nation” with “the working Poland, rebuilt under a sky of clouds and at that time. Bułhak’s Poland included both absurd tips was the suggestion that clouds over people” in the text. Rejuvenation is an act of according to the raging capitalist logic, does the Eastern Borderlands (Kresy Wschodnie) Poland should be photographed in such way, ironic criticism of photography (and other forms deserve to be pictured as thus. and the so-called western Regained Lands as to give them full justice to their supposedly of art) as art that is made for the nation’s glory; Rejuvenation, photographic installation 6 x 6 x 6 m., 2017, exhibition view Center for Contemporary Art (Warsaw) Rejuvenation, photographic installation 6 x 6 x 6 m., 2017, exhibition view Center for Contemporary Art (Warsaw) Rejuvenation, photographic installation 6 x 6 x 6 m., 2017, exhibition view Center for Contemporary Art (Warsaw) Sommerliebe, photograph 150x100 cm., 2016 detail Sommerliebe, photograph 150x100 cm., 2016 exhibition view: BWA Warszawa Mirror Sideways, photograph, 100 x 66 cm., 2016 exhibition view: ARSENAL Gallery (Białystok) Mirror Sideways, photograph, 100 x 66 cm., 2016 The Fold, photographic installation, 2016

In the vicinity of Gryfino – a Polish town located in western Pomerania – there grows an unusual cluster of highly deformed pines, known as Krzywy Las [Crooked Forest]. The bent trees are estimated to date back to the first half of the 1930s. According to the most probable hypothesis, they were grown in this way on purpose by notching young trunks in a highly precise manner. Wood obtained from such disfigured trees was supposed to be provided to local German carpenters as material for furniture because it offered perfect parameters for achieving stunning shapes, bent in a way typical for late Art Deco. This goal would be best served by ca ten-year-old trees – older ones tended to be too large. However, the plan was thwarted by the outbreak of the Second World War. After peace was restored, the forest kept growing, now on the territory of Poland, forming a bizarre reminder of modernist dreams and projects. The word “display” – which can refer to both what is exhibited and presented on screen – is etymologically related to the Latin “dis-plicare,” literally meaning “to unfold” or “to spread out.” In The Fold. Leibniz and the Baroque, Gilles Deleuze demonstrates that the fundamental unit of being – i.e. the fold – and the fundamental feature of being – i.e. folding – are not contrary to the gesture of unfolding: “Unfolding is thus not the contrary of folding, but follows the fold up to the following fold. […] Folding-unfolding no longer simply means tension-release, contraction-dilation, but enveloping- developing, involution-evolution. The organism is defined by its ability to fold its own parts and to unfold them, not to infinity, but to a degree of development assigned to each species.” (trans. Tom Conley). In this exhibition I wanted to to transform the space of the BWA gallery in Zielona Góra into an optical machine designed to unfold the Crooked Forest. The Fold, photographic installation, 2016 exhibition view: BWA Zielona Góra

The Fold, photographic installation, 2016 exhibition view: BWA Zielona Góra

The Fold, photographic installation, 2016 exhibition view: BWA Zielona Góra

Untitled (desert), Untitled (Desert) is a digital composition photograph 180x120 cm., of 17 different photographs of the same 2015-2016 desert in Israel taken on the both sides of detail the West Bank Wall. Image thus created pictures a beautiful, but geopolitically impossible landscape. A landscape of an impossible desert. Untitled (desert), Untitled (Desert) is a digital composition photograph 180x120 cm., of 17 different photographs of the same 2015-2016 desert in Israel taken on the both sides of the West Bank Wall. Image thus created pictures a beautiful, but geopolitically impossible landscape. A landscape of an impossible desert. the act of identifying an image-grave would turn our may then be perceived as a political gesture. Above all, attention to the most basic self-referential character of however, it is necessary to emphasise that at the source these photographs, to the fact that they could be called of these photographs lies aimless digging, not an object meta-images. After all, in such an equation death is discovered by a practised eye. Here, contrary to the Stones usually considered the key to understanding the status of trick, the photographer does not look with an eye sensitive the image as non-familiar. In this arrangement, an image to detail and to all kinds of disturbance (and with an eye that about death or an image in the place of death is the most is fused with the camera lens, which internalises automatic literal representative of this status; paradoxically, it is also seeing); he does not discover another object in the one at a story about this status, at least in some cases. Thus, which he looks. Instead, he creates himself an object that they are images about images. does not serve any other goal than the final image. It is, in practice, less of a component of the effect than a phase that II. must be passed through. But why not graves, really? If these are five vertical, two- metre-high photographs in “non-ageing” frames (made IV. of wood etched with acid), they are indeed images about Faced with Holes in the Ground, associations with other images (although which images are ever not about images? artworks naturally appear. Yet if the most obvious of them, – true, but these are so more than many others), most of all that is land art, does operate in this context, it does so at perhaps because they point to the fundamental impossibility a second remove: as a photographed installation and as of making a final statement, of giving an unequivocal, a photograph that reduces objects made on an inhuman objective and final answer to the question: “What do we scale to a safe denominator and to a viewpoint from which it see here?”. They remind us that even the very first step of an is possible to encompass them. Such a photograph forces iconological analysis is never unambiguous. Ambiguity does us to consider the issue of scale and the transforming not mean falsity, however. The diagnosis is directed against operations. It also brings to mind the era of technical the unshakeable truth of perception rather than envisaged reproduction, but at the same time it does not threaten as a radical relativisation of perception. Orski’s small, three- us with the option of losing access to reality in favour of image cycle Stones (2012) played on this very trait mainly by the universe of images. Above all, it points to the most referring to the traditions and attributes of photography. Yet, fundamental reversal: to most “viewers,” land art exists on the fundamental level, it set a general-image mechanism thanks to the operation of transforming an image from a in motion. The duck or the rabbit – an optical illusion from paper or electronic album; that is, it exists as a mental action the satirical magazine Fliegende Blätter as filtered through relying on changing the scale and viewpoint, an action ground – can be distinguished. Thus, these operations Freud, Wittgenstein, Gombrich, Mitchell, once intimately whose departure point is most often a small-sized but all- do not lead to abstraction understood as departure from familiar to us from the symbol CPN petrol stations, and inclusive photographic reproduction, most often an aerial figuration. They evidently break with the understanding of today from the Carrefour logotype – is the first thing that photograph. A similar reversal is caused by associations representation as a reference to reality existing outside the comes to our minds upon seeing stones that “look like with crime investigation techniques, which are increasingly image and prior to the image. First and foremost, however, meat.” Of course, in the case of Stones this visual play was often linked with art, and with crime investigation aesthetics they take naturalness away from the very procedure of deliberately made literal and revealed beforehand in order to (by some called “forensic aesthetics”), as well as by producing the image, making it subject to entirely different, entice the viewer to consider the photographic operations associations with the more traditional archaeological work, unclear and arbitrary rules. It is those procedures – ones Łukasz Zaremba (the change or loss of scale, the change of the background which the act of digging holes in the ground distinctly which perhaps ring with a distant echo of the seemingly Holes in the Ground to non-realistic, isolation, with a concurrent echo of the resembles. It is a view of the “uncovered” research area – a transparent principles of economics – that abstraction, assertion that a photograph “is what was” – the assertion view which reveals the relations between objects and which ever present in images, is sought. that is here not so much questioned as deprived of a basis is intended to serve the archaeologists in further analytical and placed in a void). Yet this illusion is effective based on and interpretive work. In the same way, a model, a rendering, Translated form Polish by Klaudyna Michałowicz the general principle which is to joggle the act of seeing, to a reconstruction or a simulation are to provide evidence in * The essay contains paraphrased quotations from Paul mobilise the sense of sight. Thus, this is not about the truth/ the visual investigations that come under the heading of Celan’s poem THERE WAS EARTH INSIDE THEM as falsity of photography, but about the duck or the rabbit, meat Forensic Architecture. translated by John Felstiner. I. or stone, never both. In the case of the Holes in the Ground, If only it were possible to say, with reasonable accuracy, graves are probably a more or less justified association in V. that the photographs show graves. Armed with pertinent this ping-pong of visual memory; it is, at least, impossible to Dug exclusively for the needs of producing an image and quotations (from Barthes, Blanchot or Belting) and with deny that this association has some visual grounds. At the then immediately abandoned, these holes in the ground volumes, whole libraries almost, of theoretical reflections same time, however, it is impossible to consider it final. Even even more seriously disturb this sequential relationship, the (from theology to psychoanalysis), we could spin one of before it arouses visual doubts – there is no simple either-or one that tells us what came first and what can be cognised those tales about the relations of death and images, two here, after all – the title is disconcerting. This time, it does on the basis of what. The object is preceded by the image, phenomena so often, and so convincingly, presented not reveal (like meat – Stones), it generalises: Holes in the also in the literal sense. The holes are ten times larger than as twinned. Focusing on the medium of photography: Ground. It is broader and at the same time more literal. the negatives that would later serve to produce the image; a death mask, a grave – or on the image as such: a but this is the phase we do not get to see. This is because crypt, a tombstone, an empty grave, a mark of death, an III. the photographic film is then used to produce further absence – we could hunt for the meanings of the works The title points directly to the designate, but it explains enlargements, this time not numbered with full numbers. from the Holes in the Ground series. Which, by the way, little. The fabled indexical power of photography does not We are thus faced with images for which “reality” – are physically large enough to suggest to the viewer reveal meanings. “He dug and dug, and so / his day went understood in the traditional manner, that is, as the source that a premature try-out of a suitable hole in the ground past, his night”* – but who did and what for? The artist with or beginning of an image, especially a photographic image may actually be an option. In the worst case, therefore, a spade, wandering up and down the country in search – does not constitute a point of reference, but rather is we would see the series as a suggestive memento of various types of earth – the forest soil with a tangle of only a stage (and not the first stage, either). These stages mori. It would not have to be at odds with the automatic roots, the clay of a marsh, the finest, purest sand – “did not are subjected to entirely arbitrary transforming operations, associations rooted in Polish culture, in which the earth grow wise, invented no song, / devised for himself no sort the effect of which is finally viewed by us. These and the grave, even mentioned separately, constitute a of language”.* But it is not digging alone that matters here. operations, even though mathematical, are not precise. sort of interpretative filter or visual complex that are most Orski’s declarations concerning his attempts at making a Yet they do not aim at making the images fully unreal. difficult to eliminate (all those graves in various places, distinction between working on art and the dominant system The strokes of a spade, the leaves and grains of sand scattered on foreign soil or dug in native soil, anonymous of labor must be recalled; this “aimless” (i.e. non-productive, are still discernible, and the graves – or, more generally graves etc.).In the best case, it is not impossible that not aimed at turning out production surplus) hole-digging and in keeping with the declaration in title: holes in the Holes in the Ground They dug and they dug, so their day They dug and heard nothing more; There came a stillness, and there came a storm, O one, o none, o no one, o you: Photographs went by for them, their night. And they did not praise God, they did not grow up wise, invented no song, and all the oceans came. Where did the way lead when it led nowhere? 180 x 135 cm, 180 x 120 cm who, so they heard, wanted all this, thought up for themselves no language. I dig, you dig, and the worm digs too, O you dig and I dig, and I dig toward you, 2015 - now who, so they heard, knew all this. They dug. and that singing out there says: They dig. and on our finger the ring awakes. — Paul Celan Holes in the Ground Photographs 180 x 135 cm, 180 x 120 cm 2015 - now

Holes in the Ground, 2015 - now exhibition view: ARSENAL Gallery (Białystok) Holes in the Ground, 2015 - now exhibition view: ARSENAL Gallery (Białystok) Holes in the Ground, 2015 - now exhibition view: ARSENAL Gallery (Białystok) Holes in the Ground, 2015 - now exhibition view: ARSENAL Gallery (Białystok) The Real Thing A series of photographic ‚documentations’ of alleged classical performance art form 1960’s and 1970’s, which never happend. Six photographs in one frame 120 x 80 2015 The Real Thing A series of photographic ‚documentations’ of alleged classical performance art form 1960’s and 1970’s, which never happend. Six photographs in one frame 120 x 80 2015 The Real Thing A series of photographic ‚documentations’ of alleged classical performance art form 1960’s and 1970’s, which never happend. Six photographs in one frame 120 x 80 2015 Painted Daido (from the Ćwiecenie/ In July of 1835 the French peasant Pierre Rivière who Polish translator of the Memoir – Tadeusz Komendant lęk- fear. As Komendant concludes, the word would Ecepharer series), photograph 140 x was arrested for triple murder wrote his memoirs. Among noticed certain formants in this language creation which therefore mean: “to learn, under constraint, how to bury 90 cm., 2014 the grotesque neologisms he created the word ćwiecenie are the key to understanding Rivière’s intention: ćwieki fear in illumination”.ĆWIECENIE is thus for me the most (fr. encèpharer) appears. Rivière uses it to describe one – studsand ćwiczenie – excercise (meaning torture) as accurate metaphor of PHOTOGRAPHING. of his favorite pastimes – the crossing of frogs and birds. well as świecenie – illumination, pochówek- burial and Repair Wire (from the Ćwiecenie/ Ecepharer series), photograph 120 x 96 cm., 2014 Repair Wire (from the Ćwiecenie/ Ecepharer series), photograph 120 x 96 cm., 2014 exhibition view: Czułość Gallery Rod 194 (from the Ćwiecenie/ Ecepharer series), photographic installation 30 x 194 cm., 2014 exhibition view: Czułość Gallery Hashtag Made of Hash (from the Ćwiecenie/Ecepharer series), video installation, 3.15 minutes, 2014 POL-Brick (from the Ćwiecenie/ Ecepharer series), photograph 120 x 96 cm., 2014 Guns With Agnieszka Polska Video 6 minutes Selected frame Guns With Agnieszka Polska Video 6 minutes Selected frames Untitled (stones), three photographs 80x53 cm., 2012 Witek Orski Solo Exhibitions

Born in 1985. Lives and works in Warsaw. Studied 2019 BWA Warszawa, Warsaw, Poland faculty of Philosophy at the Warsaw University, “I would prefer not to talk about this” receiving MA in 2011. Currently a PhD candidate both 2018 NOSPR, Katowice, Poland & TWON, Warsaw, Poland in Philosophy at the Warsaw University and the faculty “BMW Art Club: Future is Art” of Multimedia Arts at the Art University in Poznań. 2017 Arsenal Gallery, Bialystok, Poland, Lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stettin. Orski’s „Holes in the Ground” art practice can be identified as post-conceptual 2016 BWA, Zielona Góra, Poland, photography. His carefully created photographic „The Fold” images, which often become parts of photo-objects or 2014 Czulość, Warsaw, Poland, “Encepharer” installations, are dedicated to theoretical research into 2012 Czulość, Warsaw, Poland, “Vulgar” such questions as: the nature of photographic picture, identity, mutual relation between death and imaging, the ideology of the gaze or landscape as an instrument of Selected group exhibitions: power. According to his own words, Orski considers the photographs of objects, bodies or landscapes that he 2019 Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland, takes as “means of philosophical investigation”. “Monumentomania” 2019 MOCAK, Kraków, Poland, “Nature in Art” 2018 Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland, “Niepodległe: Women, Independence and National Discourse” 2018 Rodriguez Gallery, Poznań, Poland, „Cabinet of true horizons” 2018 Gdańsk City Gallery, Gdańsk, Poland, „All that’s left is a hangover that won’t go away” 2018 BWA Warszawa, Warsaw, Poland, „Friend Of A Friend” 2018 Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland, „The future will be different” 2018 PGS, Sopot, Poland, „After the end of photography” 2017 Artissima, Turin, Italy, „Booth: BWA Warsaw” 2017 Box Freiraum, Berlin, Germany, “Re: Imagining Europe” 2017 Code Art Fair, Copenhagen, Denmark, „Booth: Rodriguez Gallery” 2017 Arsenal Gallery, Bialystok, Poland, “It Is as You Think It Is,” 2017 Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland, “The Beguilding Siren is thy Crest” 2017 Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland, “Late Polishness” 2016 BWA Warszawa, Warsaw, Poland, „Dirty Dancing / Spinning Sex” with Maria Toboła 2016 Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland, “Collections” 2016 Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle, Berlin, Germany, “Common Affairs” 2016 Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland, „Money to Burn” 2016 Raster Gallery, Warsaw, Poland, “Saloon of the new photography” 2016 Salon Akademii ASP, Warsaw, Poland, “Entoptic Screening” 2015 BWA Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland, “Crisis is just the beginning” 2015 Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland, “Horsefuckers” 2015 Kunsthalle Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia, “Procedures for the head/Polish Art Today” 2014 Art Moments Festival, Budapest, Hungary, “Eastern Europe” 2014 Platan Gallery, Budapest, Hungary, “ÉRZÉKENYSÉG” 2014 Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland, “What can you see. Polish art today”