MALA GALLERY CCA/ZPAF
Pl.Zamkowy 8
Wojciech Prazmowski,
VERY STILL LIVES
colour photography (ciber chrome)
Exhibition opening: 9.09, 6 p.m.
and on view until 3.10
Curator: Marek Grygiel
Returns and rememberings reveal the real sense of continuation of gallery work. It is a great moment when a gallery may report on the subsequent stage in the work of artists-friends. The exhibition by Wojciech Prazmowski in Mala Gallery is such a moment.
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| Mediterrean breakfast | Still life with cherries |
The first exhibition of his work took place ten years ago and marked a period of his mature work. Photoworks were, for the first time incorporated into three-dimensional objects, like old window frames, glass boxes with sand, and the well- remembered metal tree, whose branches were overhung with photo-rolls. These photoworks were then taken further in Wojtek's other artistic projects. They linked photography to other objects, inscribing it with a function of complementing the artistic discourse. A consistent and durable search for a new place for photography led Prazmowski to a space, not only a sentimental space of colleges of material found in the family album, but also space as a new possibility of artistic creation. Therefore, the packets of photos tied with a string, placed in various cages, boxes and metal frames became sculptural objects too. The form of these objects, usually made of simple materials as wood, metal or paper is a factor counterbalancing photography. These objects appear on Prazmowski's exhibitions side by side with the photographs for which they were originally created.
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| Easter table | Christmas Eve |
Therefore, the current exhibition in Mala Gallery, being a return to pure photography (only photographs are included), is at the same time a conscious development of the previous traces of Prazmowski's work. His fascination with simple objects composed in a thoughtful way has sculptural effects, in spite of the fact that it is presented on a photo print-out.
However, a new element appears , which in an important way makes those photographs different from the previous ones. It is colour - added in a very economical way, almost absent in works such as "Nativity Star" or "Blue Letter", more courageous in others for instance in "Mediterranean Breakfast" suggesting an emotional and sensual way in its interpretation. This tendency for colour was for a certain time already felt in Prazmowski's works. The evidence is works included in a large international show prepared last year in Germany and currently presented in the Centre for Contemporary Art "Return to the Past - the End of Utopia?". In the latest works colour is used in a slightly perverse way: it makes these simple compositions darker and mysterious.
Still life in art history bears connotations of death and fading away (Vanitas vanitatum). In Prazmowski's works it is a next stage in his iconography of lost time, and an expression of belief that photography can make it , at least in a scope drawn by the artist. Even if the space given would be a space of a table, open envelope, a piece of wood or paper, composed into VERY STILL LIFES.