art as transgression 2014

TOMASZ MADAJCZAK

PROCESSES OF CHANGE/

PROCESY PRZEMIANY

16.11-08.12.2013

Culture Promotion Association ‘Kamienica’, ‘Lamus’ Art Space and Terminal08 Gallery invite you to the opening of two exhibitions which is part of an annual series ‘Art as Transgession’.

Project supported by Gorzów City Council and Lubuskie County Council.

Exhibition supported by Culture Ireland.

“Processes of Change” is the second exhibition from a cycle under the same title.
The previous one was shown in West Cork in Ireland in July this year.
The exhibition is dedicated to observations of and reflections on changes which contemporary societies are undergoing.

“Phantoms of Modern Tools” is an installation based on photography and sound. One of its parts has come into being through the use of luxography, a photographic technique which allows for the creation of an image without the use of a camera. In the other photographs which make up this work I combined luxography with large – format photography in the relief technique.
The basis of these photographs and its subject is the printed circuit, which is a crucial componenet of most of the objects of our everyday use. These objects, with all their great diversity as to form and colour, all hide a number of applications and behaviours which their user also succumbs to. The functionality of these objects is based on the programmed possibilities of their inner parts. Whenever any of their many miniscule elements break down, the hitherto splendid object becomes useless, adding to the heap of discarded artifacts of modern civilization.
In an attempt at establishing for myself a new relationship with the modern object, I have come back to darkroom techniques, which in the era of digital photography have ben pushed aside to the margins of photographic activity. As a teenager and, later, as a student I have experienced the magic of the appearance of a photographic image on the surface of photosensitive material due to darkroom processes. Obtaining the required result often meant hours spent in the company of darkroom lamps, looking on as the negative became a positive. The change caused by the popularization of digital technology created a discord in the processes that the photographer has hitherto been subject to. Using traditional photographic techniques, I occupied myself with the elements of the devices which on one hand had made the darkroom process marginal and, on the other, had largely changed the way modern humans think.

“Transgressive Perception“ is an interactive video installation related to my fascination with situations of crossing the unknown.
We have all become entangled into the situation of being observed by surveillence cameras in our sorroundings. As an answer to basic needs of safety and a hope for an objective view from the outside modern societies have created networks of technological connections allowing for an altered recorded vision of present and past.
I decided to create a situation in which the observer is given the possibility of observing the process of which he himself is a part. The observed can observe himself through the eyes of the observer. The relation between the observing and the observed becomes a kind of dance, a form of physical dialogue, enabling an exchange through movement, perception and presence.

The exhibition is a part of the yearly cycle entitled “ Art as Transgression”, organized by the Association for the Promotion of Culture “ Kamienica” with the cooperation of Terminal 08 Gallery and Kamienica Artystyczna “Lamus” in Gorzów. The project is financed from the budget of the City of Gorzów and the Marshall of the Lubuskie Province.