'WORKS DEPRIVED OF TITLE' - EXHIBITION OF INSTALLATIONS BY MARIUSZ GILL
From 21st June to 28th August an exhibition of works by Mariusz Gill was presented in the Center of Polish Sculpture in Oronsko. The artist, who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan and in the years 1985-89 was assistant at the academy's Faculty of Sculpture, lives and works in Odense, Denmark. From 5th to 30th Dec. the exhibition will be shown at the BWA Gallery in Bydgoszcz.
From the catalogue:
"On Symbols, Memory and Standards of Culture"
Jaroslaw Kozlowski's conversation with Mariusz Gill (a fragment of an interview)
Jaroslaw Kozlowski:
The exhibition in Oronsko is perhaps the largest you have ever organised, yet its character is not retrospective in the very meaning of this word. I gather that the selection of works it contains is not random, but there is a significant relation between them resulting from the assumed essential conception.
Mariusz Gill:
You are right, the exhibition includes selected realisations from a fifteen-year long period, which are connected by one problem line despite their formal variety that is due to their different conceptual or material aspects. The three earliest works were made during my second stay in Oronsko fifteen years ago. They pose questions which turned out to be topical for the others, those created still in Poland and those which I realised in Denmark. These questions were transforming, becoming more detailed or expanding, their accents were changing; however, their essence relates to the same issue: to what extent do symbols functioning in various cultures and religious systems matter today? Are they still carriers of the ideas that once gave them power? How do we understand them today? How - if at all - do they relate to the civilisation and morality of today, etc.? Some questions give rise to others, as a result these ideas have dominated a large part of my production.
Jaroslaw Kozlowski:
The fact that you often refer to religious, primarily Christian, symbols sometimes is a reason of rather one-sided, simplified understanding of your works. I think that you use symbols taken from religious contexts quite deliberately.
Mariusz Gill:
I am aware of the possible simplifications. Yet, I believe that these contexts are specially charged symbolically and as such specially useful in the reflections that interest me. These symbols are characterised by great intensity, they are not temporary as many others which usually performed immediate, historically conditioned functions. On the contrary, they were established 'for ever' and even if with time their meaning changed, these changes were happening slowly, they were evolving with the development of civilisation and human knowledge. What impresses me is the flow and character of these discrete transformations: which symbols have remained living, which - and why - have devalued, and also the question whether - if they have been devalued - it is possible to reinterpret them and possibly fill them with new meanings, which could result from the reflection on the passing of time. To use an example: these issues are most clearly present in "The Black Madonna", which is to be found in the CSW collection in Warsaw and in the work I once called "The Fossil". As far as the former is concerned, we very well realise the symbolic significance of this presentation, especially in the Polish culture. Well, with great piety I sculpted a figure of Madonna, then I burnt it, and next I restored it the best I could. The very process of creating this sculpture - construction, deconstruction and fresh reconstruction - seems in a way analogous to its symbolic functioning. What is the Black Madonna today? Was burning the figure destruction or was it a perverse attempt at - again symbolic - purification of the myth? Can reconstruction be treated as a desire to perpetuate it or bring up to date? The latter of the examples I mentioned is a simple form of a wooden, Latin cross to which another cross made of two granite beams is fastened with four metal nails. The first is a regular cross, the same as we know from the history of Christianity. The other is a fossil, maybe an essence of the idea of crucifixion, or maybe a forgotten relic of the past. Evidently, the cross is a Christian symbol. And then Christianity is, next to antiquity, a root of European culture. And that is why, because of the overwhelming influence on the formation of European awareness and ethics, I often reach for symbols connected with this formation. I call on them again, testing their contemporary status - to what extent they have preserved their persuasive power, and to what extent they have become cliches, reduced to purely aesthetic functions.
Jaroslaw Kozlowski:
The questions you are asking never suggest an answer, nor are they direct questions, even if they result from a precisely staged process. It is the recipient who takes a final decision about the ways of interpretation. Actually, even at the level of procedures connected with the formulation of those questions, the recipient has to be on the look out for traps, which in a way test his /her good will to accompany you in the investigation. Because not only do you use serious symbols, but also the process of their reclaim is an expression of seriousness, devoid of any traces irony or sarcasm. Definitely you do not take the position of a blasphemer or a scoffer, in the last years quite common among the Polish artists related to the so-called critical art, whose provocations often shock religious people. Activities like a simulated copulation with the figure of Christ or pissing on a crucifix are to univocally degrade the sacral attributes of these symbolic presentations, which you deeply respect.
Mariusz Gill:
There are no reasons why one should offend some religious beliefs and mock objects of religious cult only because we do not profess it. Such kind of actions is completely alien to me and I can only treat them as primitive scandalising which does not have much in common with art, yet on the other hand maybe to some extent is symptomatic for the present state of culture. In this context , it is very interesting for me to watch reactions to my works in Denmark, where the fact of confrontation with what seems to be a religious symbol or at least what belongs to more spiritual than material experiences, causes a kind of fear and even reluctance.
Jaroslaw Kozlowski:
It might be due to differences of tradition and another way of codification and different expression of Lutheran church, where symbols play an incomparably lesser role than in the Roman-catholic church.
Mariusz Gill:
I suppose that this phenomenon is independent from religious formation, especially that it appears not only in Scandinavia but also in most West European countries. It seems to be more related to the prevailing conviction that contemporary culture norms imply a rejection, or at least extreme minimisation of the awareness of roots, which are expressed by these symbols. Nonchalance towards these values is a kind of mendacity which has become emblematic for the recently popular standards of behaviour that apparently testify to your intellectual independence. Personally, I see no reason to be ashamed of the fact that the symbolic presentations of values which for years have meant something significant for the development of culture and which described the moral and ethical criteria of existence in the world, are still - to a greater or lesser degree - part of our conscious or even subconscious minds. No matter whether we believe in God or are atheists. Symbols I refer to have appeared in Lutheran and Calvinist churches and from this perspective they are universal. You can agree or disagree with your own culture, its history and tradition, but whatever is our relationship towards it, it defines us both in the social and individual dimensions. For me it is a sufficient argument to attempt to express my own stance in this matter - through a dialogue with both the past and the present times. Symbols mediate in this dialogue. I do a kind of eidetic reduction so as to, through a fresh experience and purification, reach a neutral awareness, which is for me the goal and sense of activity".
(elaborated by Jaroslaw Kozlowski)