18.
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE - body-motion-life
Two video installations of the Liverpool artist Gina Czarnecki
We are a body in the world, and our experience is first and foremost
physical taught. The body is for us a matter of course, and also a
mystery. It is the place of our greatest joy and our greatest fear.
This (naked) body Gina Czarnecki brings in her video installations
as well as charming irritating ways. If we make it on to the body
of another person, who is also our own body. We (he) know each other
again in the body of the other, which appears as a projection in moving
pictures on the wall-sized screen. Just as we once our own bodies
for the first time in the mirror considered as a unit. A unity that
can not be shaken, and in every moment we have to stand up to all
kinds of troublesome external and internal impulses and stimuli. This
body, it shows Czarnecki, is basically a body in motion and transformation.
Movement and transformation - that is the principle of our (physical)
existence. The born in 1965 in Immingham artist presents in her video
"Quarantine" forty-five minutes the naked upper body of
a dancer, the rowing incessantly with the poor as it related to their
lives. She gesticulates, she swims, she fidgets, she punches - they
are never rested a moment, and you will be given a moment alone. In
these forty-five minutes the dancing woman is in her undisguised nudity
and movement through all the possible facets of human being. And thus
the viewer's response to it. There are haste and anxiety, fatigue
and soothing, persistence and perseverance. There's anger, effort,
aggression and despair. There's strength, vulnerability and helplessness.
There's lust, fear, excitement, intentional action, and self-forgetfulness.
Czarnecki succeeds in this video-not least because of the large projection-elemental
physical and mental states beyond the mere representation of a body
in motion to make visible and aware.
In a long-standing tradition of artists that make the existential
drama of our lives for artistic theme, Czarnecki shows the body as
the constant content of an art that goes all out. Where it has the
infinite circulation of desire and the indissoluble interweaving of
life and death in his sights. Of the art of archaic body representations
and medieval depictions of the crucifixion body images of Otto Dix,
Francis Bacon and Alberto Giacometti, the Körperbildnereien a
Louise Bourgoise and body performances of Marina Abramovic to the
body videos of Gina Czarnecki extends a continuous band. The levels
of performance, dance, film and art blur in Czarneckis video installations.
The same goes for her video "CellMass". The individual human
body is doubled to tripled, multiplied and as a figure seen in transitions.
Movement and transformation are an experience, and the other is the
resolution of the human form in a nameless mass of cells. We come
from the diffuse elements and go back into the diffuse elements. Impressively
Czarnecki makes the relativity of our individual existence visible.
We tend to disappear into the crowd, and we long to disappear into
the crowd. Perhaps this conceals even our search for the lost continuity
by responding to the infinite flow of the cells. As in a dream we
are in Czarneckis video moves through a reality in which everything
is possible. Even the resolution in the light of eternity. Thus, the
artist, who lives in Liverpool Czarnecki addressed with the latest
digital media technology news of the ancient existential experiences.
In other words, despite the desensualization our lives in times of
digital simulation techniques, the body remains the inescapable focal
point of our existence.
Moltkerei workshop
Moltke Strasse 8, 50674 Cologne, Tel: 0221-7391994
6th October to 16 October 2012
Opening 6 October, 19 clock
open Mon-Fri 15-18 clock, Sat 13-15 clock
