Karolina Bregula, born in 1979, is one of the most interesting Polish artists of the young generation. She graduated from PWSFTviT in Lodz (she studied 2005-2010), before that she finished the European Academy of Photography in Warsaw (2002-2004) and the Photographic School GFU run by Folkuniversitetet in Stockholm (2000-2002). In 2011 she started postgraduate studies at the Film School in Lodz. She won Samsung Art Master award and was a MKiDN and International Visegrad Fund scholarship holder. She is a multimedia artist, apart from photography and video she creates installations and deals with happening.
The exhibition The Centre of Everything in Atlas Sztuki is a presentation of two projects: Fire-Followers and Formy Przestrzenne (Three-dimensional Forms). Fire-Followers is, as the author describes it, a film about art, progress, fear from catastrophe and unexplained happenings. It is also a film about extraordinary plants which need fire to grow. In this movie art in a perverse way becomes the part of the characters’ everyday life – they are ordinary people living in the city in the past regularly destroyed by fires. The citizens assume that the fires were a doing of a secret organization of art historians. Psychosis increases in the city. Many citizens behave irrationally, or even absurdly because of the fear of next fires. For example an elderly couple at night sleeps in special suits used by firefighters (just in case) and during a day they walk through streets wearing them (they are warm). The film Fire-Followers was produced by touchFILMS and Atlas Sztuki – the display in Atlas Sztuki is its premiere. Knowing the artist’s project, I am sure that the Fire-Followers after the presentation in Lodz will be shown on numerous festivals and in galleries in Poland and abroad.
Relations between sculpture and catastrophe are the subject of the second project by Karolina Bregula. The artist is interested in various dimensions of catastrophe. Catastrophe is often accompanied by suddenness, there often appears an element of surprise, the range of damages caused by catastrophe varies, it touches not only people, besides there is something extraordinary and fascinating in the catastrophe as such. Three-dimensional forms as the centre of everything are a proposition of a new look at three-dimensional forms in the face of approaching threat. The artist invited scientists from different disciplines to take part in the interdisciplinary conference devoted to three-dimensional forms in the face of catastrophe. Programmed death of cells on the example of wood cells illustrated by a three-dimensional form by Lech Kunka, Change of location of three-dimensional forms and the activity of brain and The mathematical analysis of three dimensional forms are the chosen titles of the presentations. During the conference mentioned above, which took place in Elblag on 14-15 December 2012 (Karolina Bregula’s conference was realized in frames of the project Awakening – before the end of the world organized by CS Gallery EL). The artist herself describes her project in Elblag as “a performative scientific conference”. Karolina Bregula has already shown many times that she likes making changes to the existing state of things. In Atlas Sztuki we will show chosen documentation of this project in form of installation.