Marcin Dudek at Harlan Levey Projects

Artist: Marcin Dudek

Exhibition title: Slash & Burn

Venue: Harlan Levey Projects, Brussels, Belgium

Date: September 3 – December 12, 2020

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Harlan Levey Projects, Brussels

Harlan Levey Projects is pleased to present Slash & Burn, a two-part exhibition by Marcin Dudek (°1979, Krakow). Slash & Burn Iopens September 3rd, during Brussels Gallery Weekend, at HLP in Ixelles. The opening of Slash & Burn II on November 5th will coincide with the opening of 1080, the gallery’s brand new 250 m2 exhibition space in Molenbeek.

Traveling and welcoming large groups will both be more complicated this year. Therefore, against common practice, we are running his two venue exhibition from September through June, dedicating the better part of a year to Marcin’s work to ensure that people have the opportunity to safely see it. – Harlan Levey Building on his self-made publication Akumulatory, Slash & Burn Iconsists of two new works and a monumental installation begun during his first exhibition with Harlan Levey Projects (Too Close for Comfort, 2013). Akumulatory (Polish for battery) is a collection of snapshots of underground gyms in Poland, found in various blogs on DIY gyms. The images show training facilities set up by young people squatting in empty council estate building basements.

Welding and constructing the training equipment from scrap metal was a popular way for Polish youths to spend their free time, a precursor to building muscle mass and social connections. The installation Akumulator salvages architecture and objects from Dudek’s youth to recreate a room that could (almost) be one from the book. It was this type of basement gym that ultimately led a young Dudek from the council estate to the stadium and into football’s violent subculture as a supporter of FC Cracovia.

Since that first exhibition at the gallery, Dudek’s research and work have explored this subculture, the sport it followed, the social spectacle it became part of, and broader phenomenon related to crowd dynamics, mass events and mob related violence. Like Akumulator the second work in the exhibition Too Close for Comfort IIIis largely autobiographical while the epic painting Slash & Burncontinues his series on stadium disasters as over 200 individually collaged, painted and burned panels, evoke scenes from the Bradford City fire in 1985. The level of detail and craft is manic and neurotic, meditative and thoughtful, as violence becomes an energetic aesthetic reflecting a lived experience.The impressive blend of rigorous craftsmanship and conceptual thinking result in a striking manner of social abstraction.

HLP opens its new exhibition space in Molenbeek with the second part of the exhibition, Slash & Burn II. The former shoe factory and mosque will accommodate an experiential site-specific installation titled The Passageand an eponymous painting. The exhibition centers on a group of over two hundred second hand jackets similar to those worn by Marcin and his fellow football supports. In that subculture, turning the jackets inside out, from black to orange was a ritual gesture that foreshadowed violence.These jackets reappear in various forms as icons central to his body of work Steps and Marches. The passage viewers make is one from his childhood, through historical events and artistic research as they follow the passage the artist has undertaken. The passage is also, very literally, the transition from the outside of the jacket to its inner seams – the moment where one joins many and everything changes. The installation is reminiscent of How to Rumble, the artist’s first in Belgium (Uhoda Collection, 2007) and his underground work Cathedral of Human Labor(Verbeke Foundation, 2014) as viewers pass through the artwork. As they do, they are confronted by fragments of sculptures, videos and paintings from recent exhibitions alongside new interventions.

Marcin Dudek, Akumulator, 2013-2018, Steel, wood, medical tape, mirror, neon light, paper, leather, silicon, cell phone, 290 x 220 x 220 cm – 86 5/8 x 114 1/8 x 86 5/8 in. Installation view Slash & Burn I , Harlan Levey Projects, 2020.

Marcin Dudek, Slash & Burn , 2020, Acrylic paint, steel powder, image transfer, medical tape, uv varnish on wood, aluminium and steel, 256 x 252 cm – 100 3/4 x 99 1/4 in

Marcin Dudek, Slash & Burn , 2020, installation view Slash & Burn I , Harlan Levey Projects, 2020

Marcin Dudek, Tribunalia , 2018, HD Video, 13 mins. Video still from performance