Land scape
Mariusz Sołtysik
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW
to creating a balance between the environment and the work. I draw on context and I give sense to both sides. This is a construction which allows for creating the whole.
Your tunnels, terminals, changing rooms, waiting rooms remind the notion of non-lieu elaborated by French anthropologist Marc Augé and establishe a channel of communication between the conscious level and the subconscious sphere: artists are always interested in probing to see what is beneath the surface: maybe one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what ' s your view about this? In particular, do you think that your works could induce a process of self-reflection in the viewers?
I know the works of Marc Augé, they are very important to me. They were published in Polish as late as in 2010. His work was important for me scientifically, and it also confirmed my intuitions. As a child, I used be ill very often. That in turn meant that I often visited waiting rooms, temporary places, doctor’ s offices, etc. Finding or discovering something captivating, interesting, imagining someone’ s history, or a pleasure of observation, in places were I spent so much time, is similar to loneliness, which you want to share with someone. It has got an intimate character, often unconscious, but you may feel well there. There is another important thing. I grew up in a non-place similar to others like that. It was a high-rise block of flats surrounded with other similar blocks, they all had a network of internal corridors. My places have some visual features of the places already known to me, but a relation to a place, proportions, scale or selected medium differ. I remember at the opening of one of the exhibitions, just before its closing time, from the darkness, I heard the voices of some viewers asking to keep it open for a bit. This was an important experience for me. It convinced me that an induction of self-reflection is possible when as an artist I am authentic on all levels. There were other incidents such as the project of a swimming-pool in closeddown power station in Melbourne, when the viewers instinctively felt the energy of the huge interior, but the water and its reflection changed the perception.
We like the way you structured invaders balloons: it leaves space for the spectators to replay the idas you explore in their own intimate lives, letting them become emotionally involved in what you are attempting to communicate. As Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, " the artist’ s role differs depending on which part of the world you’ re in. It depends on the political system you’ re living under ". Do you think that the role of the artist has changed these days with the new global communications and the new sensibility created by new media?
The work entitled‘ Invaders balloons’ has got various levels of reception, but yet again the most important is context. While thinking about different parts of the world, we tend to think about those places in terms of images known from television,