Season 7: Lawrence Weiner

Season 6: S1_92537

December 17, 2016

Participants:

Tymoteusz Bryndal, Jonasz Chlebowski, Julia Dorobińska, Lena Marie Emrich, Wiktoria Frydrych, Arman Galstyan, Barbara Gryka, Ryosuke Imamura, Monika Karczmarczyk, Kamil Kotarba, Olga Kowalska, Jagoda Kwiatkowska, Piotr Marzec, Agnieszka Mastalerz, Renata Motyka, Antonina Nowacka, Laura Ociepa, Artur Prymon, Anna Rutkowska, Maria Rutkowska, Anna Shimomura, Jana Shostak, Michał Szaranowicz, Bożena Wydrowska, Weronika Wysocka.

Studio of Spatial Activities, Faculty of Media Art, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw
prof. Mirosław Bałka
as. Zuza Golińska

Season 5: Silvohortiaromatherapy

The fifth season of “Otwock”, a project exploring the relationship between art and place is dedicated to the eponymous city’s past as a former health resort and the unique character of the local nature.

The crystal-clear groundwater, the sandy soil, the dry air and the beneficial aura of the thick pine forests all made for perfect conditions that, the late-19th century, earned Otwock the status of Poland’s first health resort for tuberculosis patients situated in the lowlands. This paved the way for the emergence of several dozen guest houses, resorts offering therapeutic baths or inhalations, as well as elegant luxury sanatoriums. The nearby forests and wild beaches on the river Swider are still widely popular destinations in the summer months.

This year we focus our activities on nature and its soothing properties. We work with Habima Fuchs, whose sculptures of plants and clay reflect the artist’s nomadic lifestyle and her deep connection to the environment. Taus Makhacheva, whose art draws inspiration from the epic Caucasian landscapes of her native Dagestan also reflects on the local situation by creating sculptures inscribed in the landscape. Both artists celebrate the indigenous flora with works tucked away in the Otwock forest while Jarosław Książek, silvo- and hortitherapist who works with aromas, will take the visitors on a walk amidst its trees. For “Otwock” he collaborated with the local landscape designer Sylwia Woś who carried out meticulous research to re-create the design of the garden that surrounded the once-elegant Abram Gurewicz Sanatorium. The hospitality of its owners made it possible to reconstruct a fragment of the historical greenery along with the aromas that were its integral part.

The works and concepts developed by the participants of the fifth season of “Otwock” will be presented during an event accompanying this year’s edition. Its curator, Kasia Redzisz, will hold a conversation with the artists about their experience of working in Otwock.  Thier discussion will be followed by a presenteation on the history of the city as a health resort and its key garden projects by invited local specialists.

Artsists: Habima Fuchs, Taus Makhacheva

With special contributions by Jarosław Książek, Sebastian Rakowski and Sylwia Woś

Habima Fuchs – Czech artist whose practice explores the frequently ambiguous and complex relationship between the realm of people, animals and plants. Her works are replete with symbolic and mythological motifs, dreamlike scenes and fantastic creatures and beings. Fuchs leads a nomadic lifestyle, her work combines references to nature and its elements that determine the mood of her journeys. Fuchs participated in Lord of the Flies, Richard Adam Gallery, Brno, Hot Time Tub Machine, Canada Gallery, New York, and Quality of Being, SVIT Gallery, Prague. The artist also worked in Poland as a participant to the project Mycorial Theatre, initiated by Paulina Olowska in Rabka, as well as to the exhibition Modest Muses at the Tatra Museum, Zakopane. In 2015 she completed the Fiorucci Art Trust residency.

Taus Makhacheva – graduate of Goldsmiths College and Royal College of Art in London whose practice frequently draws on the local character, material culture and history of the Caucasus. Among the important themes of her work are landscape, nature and their connection to the regional tradition. In 2014 she received the Future of Europe prize awarded by the Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig. She participated in international exhibitions including ‘Love me, Love me not’ at the Venice Biennale 2013, Sharjah Biennial (2013) and Liverpool Biennial (2012). Makhacheva lives and works in Dagestan.

Jarosław Książek – graduate of the Faculty of Historical and Pedagogical Sciences, University of Wroclaw. An enthusiast of nature, gardens and plants, a connoisseur of scents. He was involved in rehabilitation work for handicapped individuals that included silvotherapy (walks in the forest) and hortitherapy (growing and maintaining gardens). During his therapy work on stress elimination he developed an interest in the influence of aromas on the human psyche. Over the recent years he has been involved in developing fragrances based on essential oils

Sebastian Rakowski – historian, president of the Association of the Friends of Otwock, director of the Museum of the Otwock Land, author of the following books: "A Brief History of the Zone IV, Sub-District VII of the Warsaw District of the Home Army" (Zarys dziejów IV Rejonu VII Obwodu Okręgu Warszawskiego Armii Krajowej), "The Unit of “Skryty”" (Oddział Skrytego), "So That There is No Trace Left. The Jews of Otwock – the Holocaust and the Memory" (Aby ślad nie pozostał. Żydzi Otwoccy – Zagłada i Pamięć). He developed several dozen exhibition, educational and cultural projects organized by the Museum of the Otwock Land, the Social Committee of the Jews of Otwock and Karczew and the Otwock Branch of the Polish Tourist and Sightseeing Society (PTTK).

Sylwia Woś – enthusiast of nature and citizen of Otwock. She studied Landscape Architecture and inherited the love for gardens, art and design from her father, a graduate of the High School of Arts and Crafts. Her work involves the revitalisation selected gardens in Otwock. As part of the workshop program ‘Function, Space, and New Life of the “Świdemajer”’ she reconstructed the garden of the ‘Grandfather’s Villa’ and coordinated the analysis of the garden of ‘Villa Agatka’. In her practice, she sees gardens as things experienced only with sight, but also smell, taste, hearing and touch.

Season 4: Duties and Pleasures

The starting point for this year’s iteration of our pogramme was the group of twenty five thousand unique objects kept in Otwock Wielki. Rarely presented to the public, these items form the collection of the Centre of Modern Design of the National Museum in Warsaw, and are now stored in a warehouse arranged in the former stables of the baroque palace of the Beliński family. The extraordinary collection includes objects manufactured by the “Ład” Artists’ Cooperative, items from the showroom of the Institute of Industrial Design, works of Antoni Kenar and his students from the School of Timber Industry in Zakopane, or artists such as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Władysław Hasior, Tadeusz Kantor, Henryk Albin Tomaszewski and Władysław Strzemiński; the furniture collection includes pieces designed by, among others, Maria Chomentowska, Teresa Kruszewska, Jan Kurzątkowski, as well as works of many other Polish designers.

This fourth season of “Otwock” has been dedicated to this place, and to the furniture, textiles, glass and ceramics there gathered, as well as to the people who had created the collection. Thanks to the National Museum in Warsaw and its team, the artists we have invited were be able to spend time in the storage inaccessible to the broad public. It has been made available to them as a place of work and source of inspiration.

Artists: Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Katharina Marszewski, Błażej Pindor

Mirosław Bałka

INIMALIZM

INIMALISM is a collaborative effort of Mirislaw Balka and his students aimed at returning the dancing stage in Otwock Maly to use.

This concrete hexagonal structure is what remains of a former meeting place and a spot for relaxation. Its original function has become blurred, and the space it defines is useless.

The performance took place to the sound of Morton Feldman’s ‘Crippled Symmetry’ which employs minimalist composition. Its use referred to the austere form of the dancing stage. The music accompanied the viewers on the way to Otwock Maly.

Marc Camille Chaimowicz

The works of Marc Camille Chaimowicz frequently incorporate prototypes for wallpapers, fabrics, furniture and ceramics. His installations subtly combine the pragmatism of the applied arts with the elegance and sophistication characteristic of the fine arts. In the summer of 2014 the artist visited the storage facilities housing the collection of design and the studio of Miroslaw Balka in Otwock. He described this experience in the form of a letter accompanied by a selection of visual materials collected during the stay. Chaimowicz’s proposal will be further elaborated during the events planned for the coming months.

Katharina Marszewski

between afterhours, active decoration

Katharina Marszewski is interested in the process of artistic production and its aesthetic aspect. She uses objects and props which generate a grid of loose associations, building both semantic and aesthetic relations. Her project for Duties and Pleasures was inspired by the figure of Wanda Telakowska, the founder of the Institute for the Supervision of Aesthetics in Production and the founder of the Institute of Industrial Design and the collection of the Centre of Modern Design. During her residency at the Museum of Interiors in Otwock Wielki, together with a group of her collaborators, the artist has made a spatial structure which is a combination of installation, sculptures, and works on paper presented in the ballroom of the Bieliński palace and serving as a stage set for pieces of furniture she had selected from the neighbouring building. A monologue read out by an actress in the courtyard in front of the storage serves as an introduction to her work.

Błażej Pindor

Objects and Poses

Błażej Pindor’s photographs unveil the interior of the storage of the Centre of Modern Design and its content. They are however not an objective documentation of the space or the items there gathered, nor do they serve the purpose of an index. Instead, they are presentations of carefully selected objects in meticulously arranged positions, subtly escaping the conventional setting of either a warehouse or even an interior of a household. The chairs, closets, vases, vessels, and fabrics have been staged in impossible configurations. Exposed in no chronological order and against all rules of affinity of style, they are left to function outside of the convention of utility or a museum narrative.

Season 3: Nothing About That. Fictional narratives

is an event summarising the third season of the “Otwock” project. Its first two editions of 2011 and 2012 were suspended between the public and private spheres. The works created drew on references to the studio, as well as to the urban tissue of Otwock, its history and present shape. The subjects touched by the artists have set a basis for further endeavours. Season 3 focuses on the town’s relations with literature.

Mirosław Bałka

Bonfire

Jos de Gruyter i Harald Thys

The men from the underground

Years ago we saw two men from the underground for the first time, in the station of L.

They were drunk and held each other firmly. Their pants hung low and their shirts were full of stains. They made jokes about trivial things. With every joke they burst out laughing and tottered.

The men from the underground are in a state of total indifference. They can only make stupid jokes or become very angry. If they are angry, they may even kill their best friend.

Sometimes they badly beat each other, they knock each other out and when they wake up, they forget what happened and patch each other up again.

The men from the underground turn up occasionally. One does not see them often. When it gets hot they sleep off their hangovers in their dens. They are more likely to appear on gloomy days, when wet snow starts to fall. Then one sees them stumble in the distance. Usually they have liquor with them. They seek each other out on the outskirts of large cities. They feel best in wastelands or dirty forests.

The men from the underground are allergic to social positivism and utilitarianism. They abhor humans who aspire to physical health, labour and reasonable material wealth. They see themselves as the enemy of this. Without realising it, they rule over a subterranean kingdom.

Rather no light than false light, rather a completely irrational but fully underground existence than a highly rational and scarred existence.

That is their motto.

Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys

Aleksandra Waliszewska

Season 2: Studio

Mirosław Bałka

NightStudioVisit, 2012

The artist's studio filmed at night

Tacita Dean

Duck Brush, 2012

Numerous films by Tacita Dean refer to artistic work space. The artist filmed the studios and home interiors of Giorgio Morandi, Cy Twombley, Claes Oldenburg, and Marcel Broodthaers. She recorded the work process of choreographer Merce Cunningham, art historian Leo Steinberg, and artist Julie Mehretu. Her films and photographs are subtle and intimate portraits of people in private space, a record of time spent in a place tamed. In Otwock, having decided to focus on the primary residential function of the studio, Dean brought a personal detail, a child’s brush, into the spotlight. She blended its unique shape into a series of old postcards depicting fairytale characters. The handpainted postcards were showcased in the hallway of former Primary School No. 4 in Otwock, thus gently introducing a household element into a public space which is forever a part of childhood memories.

Luc Tuymans

Die Nacht, 2012

The art of Luc Tuymans is occasionally interpreted as an expression of belief that visual representation may only be fragmented and subjective, and of a general mistrust of image. The motifs used by the artist – film, television, and photography quotes – range from 20^th century historical topics, such as the Holocaust or Belgium’s colonial past, to banal scenes of everyday life. Personal details weave in and out of historical events. Following his visit to Otwock, Tuymans painted “Die Nacht”, a visual transformation of frames from a film by Hans Juergen Syberberg under the same title. This five-hour monologue on the history of Europe is patchworked by Richard Wagner’s music. Wagner, quotes from Nietzsche, and random images illustrating the dramatic narration. The painting was placed in Mirosław Bałka’s old playroom. Installed in the window, it can only be viewed from the street. Suspended along the borderline of private and public space, it serves as a reminder of the different concepts of history and memory, and of their personal and collective dimension.

Luc Tuymans

Ten, 2012

Season 1: Town

Lara Almarcegui

Demolition of a Wooden House, 2011

Lara Almacegui’s practice focuses on urban processes examined by the artist from the perspective of political, social, and economic change. The directs her attention to the margins of urban tissue: empty lots, ruins, wastelands.

Ostensibly meaningless spaces and buildings become a touchstone of change reflecting the passage of time. Owing to her analytical and objective approach, Almacegui avoids a sentimental atmosphere or nostalgic tones. She seems more interested in the material aspect of architecture, its physical and structural properties. The artist documents places at a turning point, just as they are about to definitively lose their original character.

During her stay in Otwock, Almacegui concentrated a typical wooden villa built in Swidermajer style. Owned by the city, the abandoned house has been slated for demolition. Many other pre-war buildings share the same fate. This practice is caused by a rise in the value of land and the high cost of renovation. Nevertheless, in the case of some historical houses, the demolitions seem to border on the illegal.

The artist wrote a detailed step-by-step account of a typical demolition and published it in the local newspaper along with a photograph of the building. In this way, the seemingly unimportant everyday episode became a transparent and acknowledged social fact. The house was documented, and its disappearance presented as a sign of an inevitable process.

Demolition plan

Anna Molska

The Welcome Sign, 2011

Anna Molska’s “The Welocme Sign”, located on the roundabout at the entrance to the city of Otwock, is a seven-meter high sculpture made from metal and fragments of pine cut down when the nearby woods were cleared. While its title references a popular form of visual marketing, the work serves as an alternative to advertising signs found by the entrance ways to many cities. The reference, however, is an ambiguous one. This is how the artist responds to the deterioration of public space and the aesthetic chaos that has been taking over Polish cities and suburbs over recent years. The form of the work is a response to the overwhelming presence of lurid advertising signs and banners. By choosing a material characteristic of the local landscape, the artist integrates her sculpture into the surroundings. Molska delves even deeper, to that which is not immediately visible.

In the interwar period, pine and its boughs were an element of Otwock’s crest, while the town itself was a popular health resort. Its current character is dramatically distant from elegant atmosphere of the past.

Molska’s work highlights and combines the thorny and irritating aspects of Otwock’s history and present, and sheds new light on problems hidden in the midst of urban chaos. The tree, removed from its natural surroundings, is a point of departure for a reflection on the current state of the local landscape – dramatically torn, devoid of needles and uprooted, it refers to the memory of the place at a point when its new identity is being shaped.

Charlotte Moth

Villa Surprise, 2011

Charlotte Moth’s practice takes as a point of departure her ongoing series Travelogue, a collection of photographs of architecture and interiors developed over recent years. The objects documented by the artist have a universal character – their appearance makes it impossible to identify them as belonging to any specific place.
In the summer of 2011 Moth photographed the Otwock district of Śródborów, a cluster of modernist villas forming a pre-war luxurious area of ‘garden-city’. She devoted a separate project to the abandoned house on Ziemowita 7 street.
Installing an enlarged photograph on an aluminium structure, the artist created a mirror image of the villa. This photographic reflection, placed in the vicinity of its original, would explore the impossibility of fathoming the history of the site.
However, the villa was demolished before Moth was able to finish the work. The afterimage, situated near the empty lot of land, became a witness of its recent past. Contrary to the artist’s original intention, the work touches on the problem of vanishing historic urban tissue, which is characteristic for Otwock.
Being aware that other villas in Śródborów could share the same fate, the artist decided to expand her project to include photographic documentation of other villas and the neighbourhood.