vernissage: 16.01.2025 / 19:00 / exhibition: 31.12.2024-02.02.2025 / ZPAF Gallery of Photography 4 St. Martin Street, Wroclaw
The relationship of photography to our memory is overtly obvious. For photography can be treated as a certain pretext, as a "blank wall" (tabula rasa), when, after its "exposure", it becomes a source of content, previously unseen. Thus, the image (in memory) appears at first as empty, containing this NOTHING, which can, however, mean a lot, as it refers to the sources of this image, to its multiple possibilities of filling this "wall" with various content - depending on the author of the photo, but also on its recipient. Everyone can design his own readings here; fill the image with appropriate artifacts, objects or found illustrations... All that is found in the photographer's perspective of vision becomes his own wall of reality perception and memory stimulator.
And here we come - in this project - to the collision of two images; that is, to the effect of searching on these walls for related objects that were actually there, but which could then be intentionally removed by the author's interference; that is, these were images first photographed directly, and in a subsequent shot - already altered. The images were thus found beforehand, and then staged accordingly....
Michal Pietrzak is a conscious photographer; he knows what kind of staffage he needs to convey his creative intentions. He is also - by training - an architect; and therefore these previously acquired skills of perceiving residential structures, the shapes of buildings and their interiors project onto his photographic vision. That is, on the ability to select and limit (frame) the view, to choose such a particle of reality, which is adequate to his authorial invention in imaging. For the causal idea of this photograph (as well as his many earlier realizations) is a kind of reflection on the relation of part to whole, emptiness to fullness, free space to strictly built-up space, etc. Pietrzak follows here his trail of the mental constructor of objects and their interiors. It is, in fact, a photograph situated in the post-conceptual setting of contemporary art; including activity based on new media and digital photography.
With that said, the "Transformations" series is actually based on the simple, conventional, principle of juxtaposing the fullness of a frame saturated with visual details with its "emptiness" - expressed by the bare wall of some selected interior. Here the author is talking about interiors found in palace and residential buildings in Morawa, Gorzanów and Sokolowsk. But actually this is irrelevant: the topography of these places does not play any important role here. This is because the author is interested here in the relationship between what is found (found) in reality and the peculiar, programmed emptiness of that wall, purified on purpose. This procedure is, of course, extremely simple, although it suggests this potentiality of reading - which our memory is forced to do - in the frame of the second photo, in its "emptiness". This memory is stimulated by the facts revealed by the first image, but also allows the projection of any associations that can complete this frame. With this simple procedure, the author refers to the essence of the art of photography; in fact, to its basic function: to record (trace) individual but also collective (cultural) memory, though also to enable creative endeavors. Which is the domain of all arts.
Thus, photography could be called "light-sensitive memory" - which is an apt metaphor for the many documentary and creative forms of activity in its field. Michal Pietrzak's photographs also fall into this space to some extent, due to their relationship with architecture, which has also sometimes been called the art of light and shadows. // Andrzej Saj
Michal Pietrzak; Doctor of Art. Graduate of the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw, Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts, Higher School of Photography in Jelenia Gora and the Faculty of Architecture at the Wroclaw University of Technology. Winner of the Prof. Witold Skulicz Award of the International Triennial of Graphics in Cracow and the Lower Silesia Voivodeship Scholarship. Distinguished in the competition Nagroda Roku ZPAP Wrocław. Awarded with the Badge of Honor "Meritorious for the Lower Silesian Voivodeship". Artist, architect, educator. President of the Lower Silesia District of the Association of Polish Artists Photographers and member of the Association of Polish Artists. He has presented his work many times at home and abroad in individual and collective exhibitions and in numerous publications. His works are in the collections of the National Museum in Wroclaw, the Association of the International Triennial of Graphics in Krakow, the City of Wroclaw and private collections. In his work he seeks a kind of compromise between purely conceptual and formal means of expression, between which he puts a sign of equality. He often creates complex, polyptical objects complemented by moving images. Combining various media, he gives the image a sublime multidimensionality in space and time.
Curator of the exhibition: Olena Matoshniuk
Organizer:
ZPAF Photography Gallery
Union of Polish Artists Photographers Lower Silesia District
St. Martin Street 4, 50-327 Wroclaw
www.zpaf.wroclaw.pl
Media Patronage:
Art magazine Format
Center for Culture and Art in Wroclaw
Project carried out under the Lower Silesia Province Scholarship.
www.dolnyslask.pl
Graphic design: Grzegorz Gajos