Anna Konik: Fear and Fascination

In a short description of the project Play Back (of Irene), Anna Konik and the exhibition’s curator, Dr Stefan Szydłowski, note that: ‘The sterility of the gallery’s “white cube” has been disrupted by irregular geometric forms crowded into the corner opposite the entrance. Their shapes refer to the form of the wall/screen in the first room, except that, constructed vertically, they are zigzagging forms that rise from the floor: sharp, evoking a precipice. Thirteen monitors have been suspended from them. The films/images shown on six of these jointly create a narrative, complemented by a deconstruction of one of the films displayed on a further six monitors. The thirteenth shows the video form of Irene’s text: “Das war der heiße Sommer/das war – This was the hot summer/this was”. It is a statement/de-struct, shattered and reassembled by the artist and the poet Donald Berger, recited and visualised. The rhythm of the installation is determined by the colours of a shattered rainbow appearing on the monitors. The projection is given rhythm by sequences repeated every two minutes and fifty-eight seconds.’

In a second text on the artist’s work, Professor Ryszard W. Kluszczyński draws our attention to the fact that: ‘The aesthetics of Anna Konik’s works are nomadic. They are an aesthetics of moving images in a dynamised space, images of differing formats and characters—video-projection images, monitor images, photographic images—experienced from a changing and mobile perspective, in constant flux. Through their presence, these images organise the structure of the experience of space, which in turn defines the framework and mode of experiencing the images and the worlds depicted.’

I also warmly recommend reading Dr Stefan Szydłowski’s conversation with Anna Konik. 

I cordially invite you to visit Anna Konik’s exhibition and see how the artist’s two latest projects appear in the exhibition space of Atlas Sztuki.