vernissage: April 18, 2024 / Thursday / 7 pm / Gallery of the Institute of Photography Fort, Fort Mokotow, 99 Raclawicka Street, building 4, Warsaw / Opening hours: Wednesday-Friday 14.00-18.00; Saturday-Sunday 12.00-18.00.
Ticket price on 19.03.2024 - 16.06.2024: normal 9 zł; reduced 7 zł
Guided tour with author_a and curator: April 21 (Sunday) at 1:00 pm
Guided tour with the author_a: June 15 (Saturday) at 13:00
Exhibition curator: Krzysztof Miękus
Our relationship to the landscape is complex and full of contradictions. We crave contact with unspoiled, real nature, untouched by man, meanwhile we cannot resist the temptation to improve what we come into contact with. Captain James Cook is said to have established English-style gardens (that is, gardens mimicking wildlife) on every South Pacific island he reached during his voyages in the late 18th century. He came across areas that were truly untouched, but sought to make them even more "natural," but in keeping with his own beliefs about what nature should look like.
Even today, in the age of overproduction of photography, we experience the landscape in a mediated way. We always see only what we believe (to quote the title of Errol Morris' excellent book on photography). In "The Impossible Horizon," Ewa and Jacek Doroszenko show the most surprising paradox of landscape: the fact that landscape as such does not exist. What does exist are points of observation, points of looking. A landscape is, in its essence, a transfer into two dimensions of what exists in the three-dimensional world. When we think of the Grand Canyon, the Iguaçu Falls, the fjords of Norway or the ergs of the Sahara, inevitably memory brings us back to specific photos taken from specific places at specific times.
Ewa and Jacek Doroszenko play a game with the notion of landscape, taking up more and more different aspects of it. Their starting point are the words of Polish logician Alfred Korzybski: a map is not a territory. Jorge Luis Borges wrote: "In that Empire, the Art of Cartography reached such perfection that the Map of just one Province occupied an entire City, and the Map of the Empire an entire Province. In time, these Immeasurable Maps proved no longer satisfactory, and the Colleges of Cartographers drew up a Map of the Empire, which had the Size of the Empire and coincided with it in every Point. Less Devoted to the Study of Cartography, the Next Generations came to the conclusion that this extensive Map was Unusable and, not without Imperiousness, gave it up to the Sun and Winters. The dismembered Ruins of the Map are preserved in the Deserts of the West." The empire from the story "On Accuracy in Science" was, of course, fictionalized. What is not made-up, however, are the satellite images in Google maps, which seemingly begin to coincide more and more precisely with the territory, but offer an experience of the landscape in a disjointed, discontinuous, structureless way, as it were. Discontinuity, the disruption of coherence, the deconstruction of structure are also what the Doroshenko duo are doing in their collages, objects, installations and digital renders. The aesthetics of glitch and generative imperfection are inscribed in a long tradition of thinking about landscape as a certain phantasm, for which the organizing categories are the sublime and the picturesque, and which still shape our expectations and ideas about communing with nature.
Using popular computer games, travel guides and other online sources, the artists reveal the dream of relaxing in an idyllic landscape, which is very common in the digital age. They look at a variety of landscapes based not only on visual aspects of reality, but equally the artists explore the usually overlooked sound environment. In the films presented at the exhibition, Ewa and Jacek Doroszenko use field recordings as the basis for polyphonic sound compositions, and introduce a performative action that allows them to use the qualities of natural landscapes as systems of musical notation. In the sound installation, they present ways of musically reading the rhythmics of the reduced sound environment through the excitation and preparation of synthetic materials.
Ewa Doroshenko - intermedia artist, doctor of fine arts, lives and works in Warsaw. Graduate of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage in 2019 and 2024, and of the City of Torun in the field of culture in 2013 and 2011. Winner of many international competitions, including Preview - Fait Gallery Brno 2016, Debuts 2018 - doc! photo magazine, Debut 2018 - Lithuanian Photographers Association, and a finalist in Noorderlicht International Photo Festival 2021, Kranj Foto Fest 2021, International Festival of Photography FIF BH - Brazil 2020, Athens Digital Arts Festival 2020, GENERATE! Festival for Electronic Arts 2019, Der Greif and the World Photography Organisation open call 2018, FILE Electronic Language International Festival Sao Paulo 2015, Biennale of Young Art Fish Eye 2013, Grey House Foundation Competition in Krakow 2011. Multiple participant of international artist residencies, e.g.Hangar Barcelona in Spain, Kunstnarhuset Messen Ålvik in Norway, Atelierhaus Salzamt Linz in Austria, The Island Resignified Lefkada in Greece, Pragovka Gallery Prague in Czech Republic, Klaipeda Culture Communication Center in Lithuania, Petrohradska Kolektiv Prague in Czech Republic, Re_Act contemporary art laboratory in Portugal. She has presented her work in many solo exhibitions, including at the Contemporary Museum Wroclaw, Fait Gallery in Brno, Propaganda Gallery in Warsaw, Starak Family Foundation in Warsaw, Artists Colony in Gdansk, Wozownia Art Gallery in Torun, Municipal Gallery bwa in Bydgoszcz, Pragovka Gallery in Prague, Exgirlfriend Gallery in Berlin, Witold Lutoslawski National Forum of Music in Wroclaw, Foto Forum in Bolzano, Polish Institute in Düsseldorf.
https://ewa-doroszenko.com
https://www.instagram.com/ewadoroszenko
Jacek Doroshenko - Intermedia artist exploring the relationship between sound, image and space. He lives and works in Warsaw and Krakow. Graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, author of audiovisual realizations, video works, sound installations and internet projects. Scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage 2020, the City of Toruń in the field of culture in 2011 and a multiple participant of international artistic residencies, including Hangar Barcelona in Spain, Kunstnarhuset Messen Ålvik in Norway, Atelierhaus Salzamt Linz in Austria, The Island Resignified Lefkada in Greece, Pragovka Gallery Prague in the Czech Republic, Klaipeda Culture Communication Center in Lithuania, Petrohradska Kolektiv Prague in the Czech Republic. He has presented his works at many solo exhibitions, including the Polish Institute in Düsseldorf, Foto Forum in Bolzano, Exgirlfriend Gallery in Berlin, Pragovka Gallery Prague, Witold Lutoslawski National Forum of Music in Wroclaw, Propaganda Gallery in Warsaw, Starak Family Foundation in Warsaw, Artists Colony in Gdansk, Wozownia Art Gallery in Torun, Municipal Gallery bwa in Bydgoszcz. He has presented audiovisual projects at The Wrong New Digital Art Biennale in Rio de Janeiro, FILE Electronic Language International Festival in Sao Paulo, Transmission Arts Festival in Athens, ISEA International Symposium on Electronic Art in Vancouver, Athens Digital Arts Festival, Future Places Festival in Porto, European Media Art Festival in Osnabrück, Performing Media Festival in South Bend, CoCart Festival CCA in Torun, Open-Source Art Festival in Sopot, Mediations Biennale in Warsaw, among others. The artist is also active in the field of music and sound art. His musical compositions have been released in the form of albums of international scope, including Infinite Values, Time Released Sound in the US; Wide Grey, Eilean Records in France; Soundreaming and Bodyfulness, Audiobulb Records in the UK.
https://doroszenko.com
https://www.instagram.com/jacek.doroszenko