Unmasking space

One of the features characteristic of Agata Wieczorek’s artwork is its theatricality. Some works of the young artist, particularly those where the world is built in ‘layers’, relate to that paradigm in a direct way. Like in stage decorations, full of scenery flats and practicables, closed by a remote horizon, planes develop in space, building the impression of depth. On the one hand, cut out objects, photographed, with shiny profiles, create a credible image of a given place. On the other hand, they make an impression of a territory which is unreal and mysterious. In the background of this eye-catching imagery stay, sometimes uninviting, sentimental views of streets and backyards from Łódź.

The above mentioned unsettling feelings are even strengthened by the fact that in this world of created maquettes few human figures are depicted in a simplified manner. Not only because when the scale of the image minimises the elements of reality, it conceals numerous details seen from the distance, but probably because the artist’s intention is not to draft in her works the images of people with definite personality and psyche, but rather to build signs of figures in a specific situation, representatives of some definite types, characteristic behaviours and historical situations, systems of values.

In his performances of the theatre of death Tadeusz Kantor tried to answer the question whether the reconstruction of memory and the past is possible in the field of art. Giving a negative answer, he pointed out that one of the obstacles in this process is the fact that in our memory images from the past appear as static, as traces of people and past events retained in photos. That is what happens in Agata Wieczorek’s maquettes. The manner she composes her installations is a reflection of a certain thought scheme, expressing our attitude towards the past, built of still static images in our memory. Despite the fact that some photographed elements of space (e.g. houses which date back to the times of the Łódź ghetto) stay in the present, their realism and tangibility cannot substitute the reality of these walls and the events which took place there. What is more essential there – like in the phenomenally lighted painted landscapes or Agata Wieczorek’s photos – is what is hidden, invisible, not the external staffage.

The multistage activity, realised by means of different media, connotes the topical issue concerning nature of photography and the correspondence of an object to its image in art. Paradoxically, photographing the following components of the ‘backstage decoration’ arranged deeply in space leads to obtaining (deliberately!) a merely flat image with some marks of spatiality. Light is a part of each story told by the artist. Due to the use of light the image is endowed with visual tension. It is more important than the necessary effect of visuality. Not only does light appear here as a visual element that evokes and defines objects, situating them in space, but also as a means of expression that is actually associated with theatre or film – the mood-creating motive that builds tension and dramaturgy.

It is perfectly visible i.a. in the series of works made in the technique of pinhole photography, whose nature helps to achieve dramatic effects. Light needs contrast so it comes out of the dark. Both in her installations and in compositions on the plane (photographs, graphics) Agata Wieczorek trusts to darkness, even the black of the night. And to silence. They are the source of what she wants to share with us, the message completed by emotions.

Images saturated with emotional values, emphasis put on psychic strength bring her works closer to the tradition of romantic anxiety than the tradition of classical moderation and accentuated visual form.

The element of such an approach is the distance that breaks the impression of realistic convention, expressed by the presence of elements of irony, sarcasm and grotesque. When mentioning the sources of her creative inspiration the artist has reasonable grounds to enumerate, on the one hand, such names as Lewis Carroll, Jonathan Swift or Bolesław Leśmian, and, on the other hand, Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller. The attitude that she has adopted lets her talk about the most essential things from a certain perspective, even ‘laugh things off’. It is often far more meaningful than an elaborate serious tale based on the narration full of details, the need to make it realistic.

The use of props and scenography intentionally creating the distance has a dramatic effect – as in the series of stage designed ‘military’ photos reminding us of edited attractions presented in media, consisting of reportage shots of everyday dramas of the society of performance. The mood of threat is nearly tangible there, though we can see that in this composition the artist used models of objects, that the world which she created emanates artificiality which comes out of tabletops, assembly ropes and tripods. The distance is also revealed in the vintage character which dominates a few other works, in the chosen – often black and white or based on browns and greys – colour composition, in the effect of aged and blurred objects retained by the technique of pinhole photography.

Agata Wieczorek’s artwork is spread between solemnity and grotesque. The young artist attempts to skilfully compromise between these two extreme attitudes; the presented order of reality is put in the frame of the adequate visual formula.

Dariusz Leśnikowski

Translated by Elżbieta Rodzeń-Leśnikowska