at the end of the gaze
2019
The multi-level project deals with issues related to bodily movement and physical presence. Wandering is a state that allows one to disappear momentarily, to blend in with the surroundings. On the other hand, it is conducting to observe certain phenomena, which remain invisible in other conditions. The exhibition, playing with the ways of exhibiting works, is a multi-layered game with the body and senses of the viewer, at the same time becoming fully understandable only after passing through the whole distance in the landscape of the Zachęta Project Room.
In this case, the journey begins with an attempt at a meeting of artists, continues in a commentary on their common impressions of functioning in the world of art, drawing on such notions as the visibility coefficient, and closes with reflections on the overlooked aspects of the artistic work. Physical aspects of both the artist's and the viewer's eyeball appear, as well as wider perceptual mechanisms within cultural institutions and the field of art.
Not without significance for the project is also the context of the season, because snow can blind, make things unreal, but also highlight certain phenomena, just as happened to Hans Castorp in the famous snowstorm scene in Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain". That is also where the motif of borrowing a pencil comes from. The theme can be explained as crossing the barrier of otherness in contact with another person, which allows one to slightly melt together with that person, stretching the artist's state of focus between presence and absence.
project was created for invitation of Zachęta Project Room in Warsaw
curator: Magda Kardasz
cooperation: Julia Harasimowicz
photos: Ignacy Śmigielski, Weronika Wysocka
„Iza Łęska's ephemeral installation consists of a photograph of the sky, from time to time shrouded with fog, as wel as an installation in the underground part of the gallery — a delicate mosaic of oval, transparent elements which, animated by light, seem to move agains the background of the wall. They enter into a dialogue with an older film by Mikołaj, projected on the floor next to it — a record of wandering on the squeaky eyes of a frozen lake. The spatial forms blended by Iza into the floor in various places in the gallery resemble islands of hills in the landscape. They are intended to disturb the routine of the regular visitor to the gallery. One of the artist's goal was to build a delicate choreography for the visitor — concerning their body in motion, getting one's balance, as well as narrowing or widening the field of vision. It is no coincidence that that the title of Łęska's work is Vitreous Floaters. In ophthalmology this term means tiny shapes in the eye that cause visual distrurbance. (At the exhibition you can check if you have them yourself by looking carefully at an illuminated photograph of the sky.) The title refers to the need for invisibility, which the artist often feels, and at the same time to complicated career paths of artists (aspiration to be visible).”
Magda Kardasz, Zachęta Project Room
