Virtual
walk
Bianka Rolando
Spring drums sing about the cleft
The construction of the first drums was connected with a hole dug in the ground, which could resemble the shape of a grave. The resonance of sound was based on the connection with the underground world. The activity of each strike was a sound for depth, that is, a reflection in a possible relationship with the dead and nature. Bark or a board or an inverted bowl of a vessel was placed on the hole and rhythmically stomped on. There were also crevice drums resembling boats carved out of a single tree trunk, they were also placed over ditches for echo/resonance.[1] The history of drums is very rich and full of contexts from different cultures. However, this story will not be a scientific article, it will only provide some more explanation for the author’s intention behind the exhibition. This most primitive experience of a membrane, which is knocked, tapped or drummed on, is the most interesting to me. In it one can find a certain relationship of the possible/impossible. The membrane is/was a kind of dam, a wall that separated the underworld and the world of the living. However, this dam caused a possible accumulation of rhythm and its power in the experience of one’s own body and in the relationship/connection with all living beings (their rhythms) and the dead. The drum was originally strongly associated with the sphere of beliefs, possible summonings, communication, which was based on a recognition more profound than words, that is, recognition, tuning in to its rhythmicity, intensity and response for the community of the hearing.
So why do I evoke “source drums” in the title of the exhibition? This metaphor also indicates my interest in the most primal intuitions related to these instruments and to terms in Polish such as “springs are beating” or “springs are throbbing” in the earth, inside the rock, where it is possible to open its depth beyond the appearance of the surface or superficial reception of reality. The water current/rhythm is important to me both in the context of listening to nature and imitating its pulses that inspires my work. The energy of springs, then streams, is often held back by natural dams: stones, fallen trees, and also by coastal vegetation, while some of these dams change over time and shapes migrate with the current.
In painting, the simplest membrane is the canvas, which, stretched on a frame, potentially also becomes a sound surface. Most often, however, painting refers only to its visual possibility of image reception. In the paintings presented at the exhibition, I considered the option of referring to pre-linguistic communication. The calligraphic nature of lines, possible signs, traces of the rhythm of beats, knocks are my promise of that “crack” in the painting. It is a constant attempt to get through something that separates to what unites the community of experience, deeper than just explanation or knowledge. This rhythmicity of the emerging painting gestures is an attempt to recall a more original rhythm, which is partly hidden and secret, and partly conscious, named in the process.
For me, paintings are poems but without the use of direct words. The linguistic description of the world and relationships often closes the possibilities of meanings in very specific forms (altogether algorithmic clichés), hence my search for metaphors that escape them. I am more interested in connection, connectivity in the understanding of Leśmian’s “meadow”[2] as movement in relationship, and not “separation”, i.e. crystallization or freezing in a strict form (such stillness, preparation of exhibits is essentially death). In his poetry, Bolesław Leśmian defined “connection” as the possibility of community with the world of nature (even the hidden one), or with the world of the dead (the afterlife), and such an understanding of connection in a deeper, intuitive, dark structure is also close to me both in poetry and in visual art. Images become for me an attempt to record the rhythm, which I try to recall as if anew. I recall the shapes that appear partly as if I wanted to partially catch them for visibility and possible definition, but also at the same time to release them. They are summoned out of dreams, from the intuition that there is still a possibility of community, for which the membrane of the image is not so much a dam or a curtain signifying closure, but a catalyst for life, piling it up in the possibility of remembering other possibilities of communication. Rhythms in my experience: stairs, going down, searching for what is at the bottom and what can co-create, and therefore how it can complement the sound that I try to extract from myself. There is the possibility of a crack, knocking can cause the door to open ajar, the energy of the source will find the possibility of opening a stone or heavy rock more precisely than a sculptor. Returning to the poetic inspiration of Leśmian, I will quote a fragment of his poem about knocking on a closed door, where the brothers heard the voice of their sister:
“Twelve brothers, believing in dreams, examined the wall from the dream side,
And beyond the wall a voice cried, a girl’s voice wasted”[3]
This poem is the story of the potential of the drum, beating on closed doors they were looking for a way out of themselves, while at the same time being a community they were generating a rhythm that was a girl for them and a possibility of calling her up through the similarity of reflection.
In addition to paintings, the exhibition includes damaged objects, and therefore useless in their former functions, and thanks to this they become a space where I can directly write down/hide a poem or a fragment of it. Words are abstract, and the physicality of these objects freed from serving any purpose means that I can test on them the possibilities of poetic metaphors. This does not mean that words are closed in these forms, or that these objects close them, but all the more so they free them to open up again. A work entitled “Poem” appears and it is a fragment of a sewage pipe flowing into the ocean, and I found it while working in a studio on Governors Island. The fragment was cast iron and I wondered for a long time how it was possible to break it in such a way, what force could have caused such a shape. The diameter of the pipe was wide enough, however, so that by attaching this fragment to the forehead, its proportions could be adjusted like a tiara. Subversively, the poem and the drawing sketching the so-called tiara decoration were written inside. In this way, the crown is read from the inside, so it is not an object denoting power or defining hierarchy, but an announcement of the possibility of a community based on being in one. The hydraulic context of the work is complemented by my long-standing inspiration from the poetic/sculptural work of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven[4], who saw in the intricacies of sewage connections a possibility of an outlet and exit to freedom, and her poems are constructed in such a way that they are often based on the rhythm and sound power of words written like blows, which can complement and clear the possibilities of going beyond their closed forms of meaning.
The exhibition also includes damaged parachutes, and their canopies could once again be a possibility of movement thanks to gusts of wind, now they become poems, so that they can once again have the possibility of movement and further journey.
Spring drums sing about the cleft is for me an attempt, through
images/objects/poems, to find a connection understood as remembering similarity and thus “going out towards,” evoking a spiritual community for the possibility of complementing its reopening.
[1] See https://pismofolkowe.pl/artykul/jak-to-z-bebnem-bylo-2386
[2] Lesmian Boleslaw „Łąka” (“Meadow”), ,Poezje zebrane (Collected Poems) volume 1, p.153, PIW, Warsaw, 2017.
[3] Lesmian Boleslaw „Dziewczyna” (“Girl”), , Poezje zebrane (Collected Poems) volume 2, p.43, PIW, Warsaw, 2017.
[4] Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874- 1927) German Dadaist artist and poet who worked in New York. Her poetry was published posthumously by the MIT Press in a volume titled, Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.
Bianka Rolando “Poem”, (poem, drawing, sewage pipe), 2024, photo by Bianka Rolando
Bianka Rolando
She was born in 1979 in Warsaw. She is an artist, lecturer, poet, and prose writer. She holds a postdoctoral degree in fine arts. As a professor at Adam Mickiewicz University, she has been teaching drawing at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Kalisz since 2022. As an artist, she regularly collaborates with the Foksal Gallery in Warsaw. She is the author of the following books: Absyda (2024), Abrasz (2022), Ostańce (2020), Stelle (2018), Pascha (2016), Łęgi (2015), Mała książka o rysunku (2013), Podpłomyki (2012), Modrzewiowe korony (2010), Biała książka (2009), Rozmówki włoskie (2007). She has presented her works at numerous individual and collective exhibitions in Poland and abroad, including: Roadside Songs, Stiftung Genshagen, Germany (2025), New York Notebook, RU Gallery, NYC, USA (2024), Underwater Palace, Yuan Museum, Beijing, China (2024), Milk Can Escape, Foksal Gallery in Warsaw, Poland (2024), Rol-A-Top-Twin-Jack Pot, Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art, Ustka, Poland (2023).
Exhibition duration Fab 6 – 28, 2025
Opening Fab 6, 2025 7 P.M.
Free admission
CULTURE INSTITUTION OF KALISZ
pl. św. Józefa 5
62-800 Kalisz Poland
Gallery Partners:
Mo GRUPA, AR NEON, SCHIMMEL Pianos, POLIFARB KALISZ S.A., M&P Alkohole Wina Cygara
Media patronage:
Magazyn SZUM, CALISIA.PL, RADIO CENTRUM, ZIEMIA KALISKA, Fakty Kaliskie