Artists: W.B., Casey Bolding, Jan Domicz, Adriana Ramić, Wilhelm Sasnal, Mikołaj Smoczyński
Exhibition title: It Just Has Wear Out
Venue: Wschód, New York, US
Date: April 16 – 20, 2024
Photography: ©Daniel Terna / Courtesy the artists and Wschód, Warsaw/New York
The time we spent with objects appears to charge them with a heightened presence of sorts. They can become a vivid memento of intimate moments, an reflection of the most banal, or a reflection of our most cherished and moving emotions. They can be mundane, tedious, striking the eye, or confusing the mind.
Are all things equally prosaic before we start to contemplate them?
This exhibition aims to explore the question to what extent a memory can be evoked, or affected by, the materiality of particular objects. The essence of things is not always captured in their tangible form. However, regardless if they are present here and now, their significance is inescapable.
In October 2003, Concorde, the supersonic passenger airliner took its last commercial flight across the Atlantic. Wilhelm Sasnal documented its scenic route by recording, on 8mm camera using Kodachrome film, a view from the plane’s window a few months before Concorde was withdrawn from the service. The video was originally presented on an analogue projector where the tape was gradually deteriorating with each presentation. Shortly before the film became impossible to screen, one of the last projections was recorded – which is the work now presented in the gallery.
Jan Domicz displays a new sculptural diptych that follows his practice in which objects perform a curious dance: Two bike chain sculptures looking at each other. The main difference between them is age. Older one is inside, displayed on the window. The second one (newer) is locked around a street lamp in front of the gallery. Perhaps it is not worn out enough to enter the gallery space. The title of this work tail comes from the sticker that was posted on the gallery’s window by the previous tenant – tailor. In time, two letters fell off to leave only the new half understandable word – tail. Time and context gives the possibility to compress and to make shortcuts. As with 2 readymades tailing (following) each other. The work forces the viewer to look around, in search for context. Lonely bike chain suggests the preexistence of a bike.
The New York-based artist Casey Bolding presents two paintings in the exhibition – Between two night-stands and You had to be there. The latter uses a shirt found at a flea market several years ago which has seen many travels, relationships, good and bad days, and everything in between. For Casey its texture, the way it has been folded to fit into the frame, created a form of a landscape that signifies the passing of time. The large painting is titled Between two nightstands. It depicts a spine of a book standing in between two nightstands. The book has a unique power imbedded in its contents. it connects individuals across time and space – for better or worse.
Adriana Ramić’s works presented in the exhibition titled Encoded Image Memory I and Encoded Image Memory II were part of her larger project Novi previously shown at Hessel Museum of Arts, CCS Bard Galleries in 2019. The show reflected upon the role of images and computation in relation to memory. The artist’s father used to work as a computer programmer in Lignošper, a furniture factory in Bosanski Novi, in former Yugoslavia. He coded a dot matrix image, somewhat choosing President Josip Broz Tito as his subject. Tito died the following day. The police came to the factory inquiring whether there is a connection between the death of the president and the created image.
Mikołaj Smoczyński was a Polish painter, photographer, performance artist, working with installations and sculptural objects.He was born in 1955, in Łódź, and died in 2009 in Lublin. His most captivating works were the site specific installations he set up in his studio and their documentation on black and white photographic film. His practice highlighted the materiality of things and their relation to the space. In the early 1980s he abandoned painting and moved on to producing objects and installations which he then began documenting in order to study the states of the altered spaces. In many cases his sculptural works were constructed with the sole purpose of photographing them. The archival photograph from 1983 entitled Instruction (Inside and Beside) is part of the series of works he constructed between 1980 – 1998 where found objects as well as hand-made came together into geometrical leaned against the white wall of his studio. Smoczynski was investigating how the light and shadows reconfigure the perception of their presence. His practice questioned the boundary between the work and its representation or documentation.W.B, the initials refer to William Basinski – the ambient music composer, author of phenomenal The Disintegration Loops. He has worked with tape loops for over 30 years, making field recordings from nature and shortwave radio signals. In the summer of 2000’ he salvaged a number of tapes which began to crumble and, literally, disintegrate as he was digitizing them. Finding a striking beauty in the decay of those objects he created an album described by one of the critics as: This is vital music for the human condition, divinity culled from dust. When you leave the gallery and find yourself walking across the city, listen to DLP 1.1 (1:03:00).
