Artists: Ania Bąk, Jakub Czyszczoń, Piotr Bury Łakomy, Inside Job (Ula Lucińska & Michał Knychaus), Daniel Koniusz, Mateusz Sadowski
Exhibition title: Minimo uno. Massimo due
Venue: eastcontemporary, Milan, Italy
Date: November 17, 2022 – January 14, 2023
Photography: Tiziano Ercoli / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and eastcontemporary, Milan
1.
Fragment (definition): a small separate entity that has been broken off from a larger unity.
2.
The existence of a fragment implies the loss of original unity and the rupture of the previously existing structure. Fragments are born from the upheaval of the space-time continuum and the negation of logical progression.
3.
When fragments broke off from the original totality, History began.
4.
[…] spolia from the classical world: columns, capitals and monuments. A stone hand with its’ index finger missing, the raised leg of a horse in gallop, the face of an emperor with an eye gouged out.
5.
Fragments from ancient poems:
[…] grieving for the past
[…]
[…] millet seeds
[…]of the citizens
[…]once again no
[…]
[…] but you Kypris
[…] setting aside evil
6.
A deep silence surrounds fragments. Every sound steers clear from their gravitational pull. Although fragments exist in separation from the world – disconnected from that bird that has just flown by, the coughing of a stranger on a bus or the sudden sound of a glass breaking– they are also indelibly connected to it.
7.
Breaks are always, and fatally, reinscribed in an old cloth that must continually, interminably
be undone.
—J. Derrida, Positions, 24.
8.
[…] never will it perfectly fit back together. There will always be a fissure, a gap, a lack. Meaning slowly seeps away.
9.
A crumpled bus ticket on the table. A hand laying still. How blue is the shadow on the wall!
10.
[…] not impossible to happen
[…] to pray for a share
[..]
[…]
[…]
[…]
toward […]
[…]
[…]
out of the unexpected.
11.A
Both artist X and artist Y had their studio in the same building, located on the outskirts of a large city. Each morning X went for a walk and collected scrap objects found on their route: twisted wooden branches; broken, plastic blades from abandoned fans; corroded, metal sheeting. In the evening they would attempt to piece the objects back together to restore the original unity of the world. From Y’s studio an incessant rumble could often be heard: the artist spent days on end splitting massive concrete blocks with the help of a pneumatic hammer. What remained were hollow concrete shells. Y believed you can only join your forces with the natural progression of entropy.
11.B
X in an email to Y:
But there are no fractions, the world is an integer
Like us, and like us it can neither stand wholly apart nor disappear.
– John Ashbery, A Wave (1984)
12.
Fragments incite us to act: to complete a broken circle, to find the missing world, to pick up the object that has just fallen on the floor.
13.
In mathematics, fractals – from the Latin fractus ”broken” – are used to describe infinitely complex entities. They have been employed to describe both the shape of an ear of wheat and the structure of the universe.
14.
[…] heart
[…] absolutely
[…]I can
[…]
[…]would be for me
[…]to shine in answer
[…]face
[…]
[…]having been stained
[…]
15.
The geographical equivalence of the fragment is the archipelago. A chain, collection or cluster of scattered islands. Their identity is defined by the flux of migration, multiplicity and irreducibility. The logic of the archipelago is the logic of the paradox: the impossible convergence of opposites.
16.
Some grains of rice sticking to the bottom of a pot. The life cycle of a fly. A set of keys left under the doormat.
17.
The answer to fragmentation can only be more fragmentation.
–Dorota Jagoda Michalska
Minimo uno. Massimo due, 2022, exhibition view, eastcontemporary, Milan
Jakub Czyszczoń, Untitled, 2022, oil paint, acrylic, plant debris, newsprint clippings, epoxy resin, wood, 70 x 90 x 4.5 cm
Jakub Czyszczoń, Untitled, 2022, oil paint, acrylic, plant debris, newsprint clippings, epoxy resin, wood, 70 x 90 x 4.5 cm
Ania Bąk, Dirty Seeker, 2022, wooden panels, textiles, iron filings, glue, wax, corduroy, metal, copper cable, grass, snail shells, 50 x 50 cm
Daniel Koniusz, Untitled, (C.F.P.S.E.M), 2022
Ania Bąk, Dirty Seeker, 2022, wooden panels, textiles, iron filings, glue, wax, corduroy, metal, copper cable, grass, snail shells, 50 x 50 cm
Mateusz Sadowski, Time Settings, 2022, 35 x 285 x 30 cm
Mateusz Sadowski, Time Settings, 2022, 35 x 285 x 30 cm
Minimo uno. Massimo due, 2022, exhibition view, eastcontemporary, Milan
Mateusz Sadowski, Time Settings, 2022, 35 x 285 x 30 cm
Piotr Bury Łakomy, Blue Bodies Garden / Ogród ciał niebieskich, 2022, aluminum honeycomb, concrete, ostrich egg shells, oil paint, resin approx, 46 x 58 cm
Mateusz Sadowski, Time Settings, 2022, stop-motion animation, 4K, 6’22”
Jakub Czyszczoń, Untitled, 2022, covered with oil paint and epoxy resin plant debris, natural size
Piotr Bury Łakomy, Blue Bodies Garden / Ogród ciał niebieskich, 2022, aluminum honeycomb, concrete, ostrich egg shells, oil paint, resin approx, 46 x 58 cm
Inside Job, Diaphane, 2022, stainless steel, brass, 55 x 13 cm
Inside Job, Diaphane, 2022, stainless steel, brass, 67 x 45 x 5 cm
Piotr Bury Łakomy, Planet Garden / Planeta ogród, 2022, ostrich egg shells, dried flower, aluminum car putty, oil paint, offset print, resin
Inside Job, Diaphane, 2022, stainless steel, brass, 67 x 45 x 5 cm