Presence in Absence. Katarzyna Kujawska-Murphy’s exhibition in the Nowa Scena Gallery | Interview by Contemporary Lynx

Presence in Absence. Katarzyna Kujawska-Murphy’s exhibition in the Nowa Scena Gallery | Interview by Contemporary Lynx

Katarzyna Kujawska-Murphy is a visual artist, creator of art installations and academic teacher. Her interest lies primarily in the notions of time and space explored through the lens of psychophysiology of perception, social aspects of human existence immersed in the contemporary urban landscape. She draws on the achievements of modernism and pre-war constructivism, processing pre-existing reality with the use of objects that have specific, utilitarian functions in order to define abstract notions, such as decay, entropy, exhaustion, wear and tear.

Dominika Górowska: We’re meeting to discuss your exhibition “Obiekty identyfikujące: stal, narzędzie, gwóźdź, robotnik. Tkanka domu” (“Identifying Objects: Steel, Tool, Nail, Worker. Home tissue”) that recently opened in the Nowa Scena Gallery by the University of the Arts in Poznan. Could you please tell us something more about this exhibit?

Katarzyna Kujawska-Murphy: The exhibition is a meditation on life, memory and walls. I visualize human achievements, architecture and people around it. However, the state of a wall, a person and memory is often fragmented, incomplete. Social order leaves the traces that define tensions between the internal inertia and the need to “go outside”, the tensions pertaining to unfulfilled needs. Installations on this exhibit, drawings, videos and documentary films visualize and communicate a mindset of a person in the city, their awareness and desires. Self-portrait with no self is presented as disturbance of everyday order, which is expressed through symmetry or lack thereof. The objects are subjected to the forces of physics, gravity and psychophysiology of seeing. The exhibition focuses on the psychological and material “negatives” and “lack”, on pursuing “the absent”. I work not only with large-scale installations, tools, fragments of pipes, frameworks of cities, but also with all fragments of memories.

DG: The exhibition features spatial installations using fused metal components inextricably linked with the space that are complemented with the video footage. What do these elements, their deliberate arrangement and intentional juxtaposition refer to?

KK-M: Steel and rock, shadow, in other words absence of light, provide foundations for my practice, means of communication, elementary notions related to covering and uncovering, continuum, identifying the center, relations of inside-outside, close-far, together-separate. Symmetry plays an enormous role. Occasionally, missing fragments offer key lines of thought about the pieces, whereas the yearning for “the non-existent,” which I’ve mentioned so much, forces me to work. Gravity, which ensures our existence on Earth, is demonstrated by placing granites and marbles on taunt steel cables.

In the context of spontaneous perception, these experiences open up a space for a human being, along with their dynamic field of interacting with time, transience and cyclicality. Building rhythm, setting accents in space or pauses along the continuity of the extrapolated construction specifies the relation between different directions and orders them. It is applied to maintain a logical and clear construction between the object and drawing with the lack of light. Shadow drawing is an integral part of creating several of the recent large-scale installations. Despite my fascination with the psychophysiology of seeing, I’m still delighted by the fact that you can see something that doesn’t exist. We see the SHADOW, which is the LACK OF LIGHT. A tiny thing, and yet it is one of the foundations of an installation, composing a drawing with shadows is essential to creating a whole. Inserted video footage often captures real life situations, such as construction that was happening outside my window during strict lockdown in the pandemic. The second screening reflects the state of mind, it doesn’t impose anything, neither offers answers nor asks questions. It shows a train that keeps leaving, that you still can’t catch, and you can hear the vibration of the wheels on the metal tracks, but the desire to break away from gravity is also there.

Full text of the interview.