Participating Artists
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The Collector's Massif, from the Collections of Robert Kuśmirowski and the Sosenko Family, 2009 (video still), video, single-channel projection, 10:26 minutes, sound, courtesy of the artist and Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery, Krakow. The original project was subsidized by the Polish Ministry of Cultural and National Heritage
Robert Kuśmirowski
Robert Kuśmirowski, one of Poland's leading artists, is known for his rich, highly detailed installations, which have a multilayered, historical character and capture the atmosphere of a particular time and place. His work focuses on the affinity between his personal past and his country's collective past, while uncovering forgotten historical layers and subverting the canonical status of Polish cultural memory. His environmental installations combine authentic objects with ones he produced himself, which appear similarly obsolete. The work featured here is a video documentation of his exhibition "The Collector's Massif," which was presented in 2009 at the Krakow art gallery Bunkier Sztuki. This exhibition revolved around the reconstruction, recycling and mixture of new and familiar themes from his own body of work, which includes tens of thousands of objects. Unlike his earlier works, which reconstructed the aura of traditional handicrafts by combining them with artificial simulations, here Kuśmirowski chose to reconstruct the artist-collector's "emotional state." To this end, he brought together all of the objects used in his earlier installations, and stored all over Poland; he displayed them alongside the numerous collections of the Sosenko family, which mainly collected toys. The exhibition spread out over two floors: the first floor featured numerous objects in a dreamlike installation, while the well-lit space and sense of order contributed to an optimistic atmosphere; the second floor featured a disorderly, oppressive accumulation of objects imbued with a dark, threatening quality. This video functions as a virtual tour of the exhibition, which reveals how the functional value of the objects is transformed from that of historical signs associated with a given material culture into emotional symptoms. According to Kuśmirowski, they function as metaphor for the depths of the artist-collector's inner world, which is revealed to the viewer in what seems like an attempt to purge oneself of the desire to collect.
Born in Lodz, Poland, 1973; lives and works in Lublin, Poland
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