Katarzyna Kujawska-Murphy | Identifying objects: steel, tool, nail, worker. The Tissue of the House

Katarzyna Kujawska-Murphy | Identifying objects: steel, tool, nail, worker. The Tissue of the House
Gallery Nowa Scena UAP, 28 Marcinkowskiego Ave.
Opening: 14.02.2024, 18:00
14.02-3.03.2024

Katarzyna Kujawska-Murphy

Leaving aside the interpretation that arises thanks to the objects used and their traces, it is worth taking a closer look at the rhythms themselves, alternative arrangements, and the balance between the continuity of elementary figures and their lack. The lack is visualized by shadow drawing. A close relationship is created between the internal fragments of the building’s fabric that go outside – these elements complement and define each other. The meaning of this precisely constructed piece does not arise solely from the steel soul of the house, because it cannot be analyzed without taking into account the time that accompanies it, which contributes to entropy. There is a relationship of interdependence between the frame of the house and its shadows outside. However, the fundamental problem for my installation will be an extreme situation when a fragment not only subordinates the external space, light and the lack of it, but is the only remnant of the tissue of the house.
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Entropy related to life, and in my understanding also to cities and walls, is visualized in my art as the fragmentation of human achievements, architecture and man himself, whose fragmented thinking and feeling are united by Time. Absence and the desire for the unattainable is a much stronger driving force. The product of social order are traces that define the tensions between internal stillness and time. Artistic visualization and communication of the current human mind in the city as well as consciousness and desires can be found in installations, drawings in space, and videos. The self-portrait without self is presented in a reflection or context of mental and physical symmetry and indicates shifts in order in everyday life. Objects are subjected to the tension of the forces of physics and gravity, which is intended to indicate mental and physical negatives, “absence”, following the absent. Identity linked by memory. However, memory also undergoes degradation and entropy. Fragments of pipes – city skeletons and fragments of memories are the building blocks of my structures.

The drill, the main motif of the installation, symbolizes an innocent, spiral aesthetic object of great power and visualizes the human mind.
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In order to organize space and indicate the “trace” of time, it is necessary to answer the question of what the strategy of showing the fabric of architecture is and what I mean by strategy. The answer to the first question, what is the “tissue of the house”, can be considered relatively simple: it is signals in the form of known line elements, angles developed when installing all steel utility installations hidden in the walls, which are a modal element for me. Strategy, on the other hand, is responsible for building rhythm, determining accents in space, pauses between the continuities of the extracted frame structures, defining the relationship between individual directions and organizing them. It is used to maintain a logical and clear structure between the object and drawing the lack of light.

People shape architecture, and architecture shapes people.

KK-M

Katarzyna Kujawska-Murphy
www.kujawska-murphy.com

The main field of Katarzyna Kujawska-Murphy’s artistic research is space and time in the context of the psychophysiology of perception. This is visualized with spatial installations. The artist also explores social aspects of human existence in city psychology. The aesthetics of modernism and constructivism, as well as video art, which are close to her, characterize her drawings and installations.

Katarzyna Kujawska-Murphy is a graduate of two art universities:

Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design in London and the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan, where she works (currently M. Abakanowicz University of the Arts).

In 2010, she received the state distinction: “Merit for Polish Culture”.

She is a winner of the Award of the Minister of Culture and Art (National Painting Review, Promocje’97).

She participated as a speaker in national and international symposia, including: at Columbia University and at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where, in cooperation with the Kościuszko Foundation, she carried out the project and exhibition “Silence in slow motion” at Lou Reed Studio in Westbeth. She participated in symposia and both individual and collective exhibitions in Japan, Italy, Taiwan, Ukraine, UK, Great Britain or Germany, among others at BAUHAUS in Dessau. She is a curator of international exhibitions, including: Regeneration of Forgotten Districts of Poznan, art festivals in cooperation with centers in London, Berlin and Osaka. For 20 years she has been promoting Polish contemporary art abroad, mainly in Japan, and Japanese art in Poland and Europe.