GalleryRe:Medium – Municipal Art Gallery in Łodzi
20.12.2019–1.02.2020
Curator: Adriana Michalska
Informations about wxhibition on the website of the gallery PL
Photo documentation on the Szum Magazine PL
At the end of 2019, from 20 December, you will be able to see the works of the Krakow artist Radek Szlęzak in the City Art Gallery in Łódź. The exhibition title „The Living Dead” refers to objects, and more precisely to monuments placed in public space, which as a result of the process of changing, manipulating, and removing undesirable events, heroes or symbols from collective memory, were doomed to be erased. It is worth noting that the word “pomnik” [monument] etymologically derives from the word “pomnieć”, which means “remember”. Thus, they are incorporated in memory relations. In this sense, the “living dead” are indoctrinated images that symbolise fallen ideas, doomed to extinction. They cannot, however, be easily removed and they return in a new form: either as objects having completely new meanings, originally unplanned for them, or as images-remains, physically wounded and damaged.
Oftentimes, the destruction process has
negative connotations. Yet, at the same time
and paradoxically, as a fact having its own visual
representation, it is related to an involuntary creative
gesture. Thus, it becomes creation, development of
a new structure. Therefore, the gesture of removal
creates new images. The act of iconoclast can be
reflected in immaterial documentation of the world
of media which function as a transmitter of modern
lifestyle, affecting both man and the entire shape of modern human culture. Media become the tool of
political marketing, manipulation of the recipient,
through using the message for political or
propaganda purposes. Sometimes destruction
assumes performative nature, becoming a means
of communication, handling a dialogue of emotions
and meanings, provoking polemics, thanks to which
it becomes an important voice in the discussion on
the state and condition of our community.
Exhibition of the works titled „The Living Dead”
is the first opportunity for the audience in Łódź
to become acquainted with the works of Radek
Szlęzak. The exhibition covers both the latest works
as well as the earlier ones, which fit into the concept
of the whole presentation. The most recent cycles
from 2019 are among others: „Zeitgeist”, „Powidoki
historii” [„Afterimages of History”], „Totemy”
[„Totems”], „Domnatio memoriae”, „A Specter is
Haunting the World”, „Życie wewnętrzne „ [„Inner
Life”], „Żarłoczne oko” [„Gluttonous Eye”].
In his works, Radek Szlęzak deals mainly with
the subject of historical updating and outdating
of paintings, shaping process concerning political
memory and the struggle for domination in public
space. The artist keeps close to the stylistics
of David Cronenberg’s films, using the means of
expression typical of bodily horror – the threat
coming from inside the human body is of crucial
importance here. The paintings created by Radek
Szlęzak do not imitate reality. They are living
paintings – organisms that assume the form of
bodily and organic metaphors and acquire new
meanings through the exposition of ideological,
semantic, aesthetic, and political dimensions.
Adriana Michalska // translated by: Zofia Piwowarska