BECOMING. MOSSANIMISM
Artist
Ernest Borowski
Curator
Arkadiusz Półtorak
Place
Elementarz dla mieszkańców miast
Asnyka 7, 3rd floor (the attic)
Opening
16/06 | 8 p.m.
Event description
For Borowski, work on this exhibition provided an opportunity for an embodied examination of his own identity and the relationship of contemporary man to his cultural and technological surroundings. The result of his research is characterized by remarkable openness. The artist takes advantage of the benefits of the technical inventory and uses its elements in his work. At the same time – by interweaving wires with biomorphic materials in his installations – he indicates that man-made apparatuses should not be treated merely as tools, simple means to a predetermined end. They are also parts of the infrastructure that transforms the Earth’s surface, becoming – for better or worse – its integral components. Borowski has a similarly multidimensional understanding of the position of humans themselves. His sound works, performative project and realization in virtual reality are an invitation to look at oneself from a non-human perspective and to question the limits of one’s own body (or the autonomy of the thinking subject which inhabits this body while remaining dependent on so many other entities). It is worth noting the queer aesthetic of Borowski’s work. The artist belongs to a generation for whom the Women’s Strike and the Youth Climate Strike may turn out to be formative events. Flirting with camp and the “club sound,” or basing his projects on close collaborations with friends, Borowski asks open questions of art and society and avoids explicit answers – but does so from a deeply situated perspective. It is a perspective marked by a desire for change, a strong sense of value, or trust in intuitive cognition – but also a strong feeling that there are no simple, messianic ways of exodus from the existing world.
Sunday 20 June, 14:30 – special event: performance by Szymon Tur in the gallery space
Text: Arkadiusz Półtorak
Diploma project developed under supervision of dr Mariusz Sołtysik at Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, Faculty of Intermedia (Transmedia Studio)
Description of the place
A gallery, a club, a meeting spot and an artistic residency. It exists since 2016 in a house at Adama Asnyka 7 in Cracow. It consists of a basement, where most music events take place, and an attic which is a specific and sometimes demanding space to present contemporary art. Bertold Brecht is the patron of Elementarz, from whom the name of the endevour was borrowed (from the poetic series Aus dem Lesebuch fur Stadtbewohner). In relation to Brecht’s heritage we support the development of actions that are socially aware and experimental in the matter of aesthetics of visual arts, electronic music and other similar genres.