ROBERT KUŚMIROWSKI „Story ON/OFF”

Robert Kuśmirowski “Story ON/OFF”
Jun  30 – Aug 20, 2022


Robert Kuśmirowski “Story ON/OFF”, fot. Jakub Seydak

HiSTORY

It is one of those psychosocial sciences where all the discussed and described events, even the most recent ones, essentially undermine the essence of reality and of what really occured.  As many as there are human beings on our globe, there are also as many versions of comprehending and accepting these records and events, which we consume. The very concept of history already contains a certain explanation in its name.  If we break this word in two parts, then something will be created that carries a solution in English (His Story), i.e. his private story, plot, fairy tale, anecdote…  This means that all attempts to turn a fact into a description are already in the first second doomed to failure. There is no such mind or technology which could faithfully represent something that, in the past or a minute ago, actually happened. Almost no one takes into account the individual condition, mental and educational conditions of a given historian.  With our poor language we cannot learn the truth, the value of these higher events, because we will always turn it into our crippled mind and private feelings, and maybe even our own beliefs (His Story). Today, there is a lack of consideration and research on the causes and the importance of our missions and our behaviors when looking at the longer period of our presence on Earth.  Why this and why in such a way and not otherwise do we do it with others and to other people?  Is it a certain broader, unrecognizable program, some kind of codification that, regardless of our achievements, does with us, what it wants or serves another cause?  History becomes something that we know for sure or for which we go beyond the area of our knowledge, but also what we soon lose sight of.  It is time that puts historical truths in danger of being disrupted and disintegrating in the future. History reminds us of itself endlessly. It begins at the same time as it ends.

History and its records are also really one great falsification of what is inconvenient for us and politically incorrect for the given times. It is also a megalomaniacal triumph of the individual and his or her considerable ignorance, combined with attention to their own priorities and smuggled crap in the fumes of selfish obstinacy with a hint of impunity.

DocumentatiON / OFF

The social need to record and commemorate various events, exhibitions, people and places is to reduce their physical presence to an ethereal state, but a record that is recognizable to others.  They are movable and immovable things, delegated to a certain set, in a form appropriate or incomprehensible to us, always different for various environments and situations. It is also a perpetuation of important and petty matters, like a monument to our times (Document, i.e. Monument), when we testify to our progress, reasoning and understanding of our presence or attempts to organize the World.

A document is, in a way, death for given representations, if they are already recorded or immortalized in a picture.  It is with this scrap of record of our humanity that future generations will have to associate and reread the past, without opportunities and space for a longer, true sequence from the chosen life.  Documenting emerges from a time gap, reaching the moment when it became an image of something that no longer exists.  Getting to know the processes of a document’s death and the awareness of their inevitable end, makes one’s experience and communion with a document into a really clear vision so that one is able to fulfill it in a personal way for oneself.  Thus, the document opens a space for time itself, torn out of the continuous present.  Hence, any attempt to document (as a kind of compulsory detention) makes us aware of the relationship between a document and history, photography and memory, space and a person. Precisely because history breaks down into documents.

                                                                                                                           Robert Kuśmirowski


                                                                                                                                        

Robert Kuśmirowski – performer, author of installations, objects, photographs, drawings. Born in 1973 in Łódź.

In the years 1998-2003 Robert Kuśmirowski studied at the Art Department of the Institute of Fine Arts at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, where he obtained a diploma in the Monumental Sculpture studio of prof. Sławomir Andrzej Mieleszka. In the academic year 2002-2003 he was on a scholarship at the Metal and Modeling Laboratory at the University of Rennes 2 and Beaux-Arts Rennes. Associated with the Foksal Gallery Foundation in Warsaw and Guido Costa Projects in Turin. Winner of Polityka‘s Passports for 2005 and the Annual Award of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in the field of Visual Arts for 2011, as well as many other awards. He lives and works in Lublin. From 2007, he was employed at the alma mater of the Institute of Fine Arts at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, the Department of Intermedia and the Sammer Academy in Salzburg in 2013-2014.

Most of his works are based on the reconstruction and copying of old objects, documents, photographs, or rather creating their confusingly similar imitations. Usually they do not have their own specific prototype, but only evoke the material culture of a certain era. However, they are always characterized by obsessive accuracy and meticulousness. In larger installations, the artist’s passion for collecting is also revealed – the assembled items then create collections that are difficult to comprehend. In this way, Kuśmirowski refers to memory, history and nostalgia that accompanies visual culture from a distant and a bit closer to the past, slowly disappearing under the next layers. Thanks to this, his works also reveal a vanitative thread – recreating the past material culture becomes a way of dealing with the topic of transience and death. His actions and performances are of a similar nature, and are sometimes complemented by his own musical compositions.

Exhibition duration: June  30 – August 20, 2022

Exhibition opening: Thursday, June 30, 2022, at 7 pm

Opening online: https://www.facebook.com/GaleriaKalisz

Organizer:
The Jan Tarasin Art. Gallery in Kalisz
Culture Institution of Kalisz

Gallery partners:
Ergo Hestia, Polifarb Kalisz S.A., M&P Alkohole i wina świata

Media patronage:
Magazyn SZUM,  Radio POZNAŃ, Ziemia Kaliska, Calisia.pl, radio Centrum