"We are inhabited by inner and intimate territories, and without them we wouldn’t be able to live anywhere — neither in the city nor in the world"1.

Through the body man belongs to the world that surrounds him and is part of territories that mingle and cross-breed, where circuits intersect. By moving and acting in space, man defines its boundaries, at once physical and mental, thus mainly determining the strength and scope of action. The body carries in itself its performative dimension.

In the displayed selection of works this “body-territory” is also expressed and shown in pictorial matter of various states of density: Anna Orlikowska’s “organic” matter, Patrycja German’s spilling beetroot soup, dense fog in Łukasz Gronowski’s video, Dominik Lejman’s spatial location or Agnieszka Kalinowska’s clothes. Picturality is very much present — it establishes the body, forms it.

Each of the artists, in his or her own way, develops a subtle thinking of body and territory showing us that the artist himself is a place, a nomadic territory that participates in the world.

1. Fred Kahn, Nouveaux territoires de l’art et de l’urbanité, Magazine La friche, avril 2006.
2. Merleau Ponty, Le Visible et l’invisible, Gallimard 2004, p. 176.

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PATRYCJA GERMAN
BARSZCZ
Video on DVD - 3 min loop - 2004
Edition: 8 + 2 AP
-----> www.galerie-beckers.de
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Barszcz addresses the question of “territory as performance.” Patrycja German creates video-recorded performances in which she performs precise and ritual actions; the actions, though simple, create much tension. Her works “are sketches, nothing big, no secrets, no instructions,”3 they are observations and thoughts about “self.” Through performance the body is brought into the public space in the name of the private space, it claims the right to define itself as corporeal territory.

Barszcz features a white interior in which Patrycja German, wearing a white formal shirt, sits at a cloth-covered table. She slowly lifts to her lips a heavy 10-liter pot and starts gulping down its contents. Evoking violence, pain and orgiastic pleasure, she asks questions about identity. The bright red, blood-red liquid, in this case red beetroot soup called barszcz, a traditional Polish dish, spills, defining a certain territory. This gesture and its intensity are also a way of appropriating or re-appropriating the artist’s culture, her Polish roots.

Patrycja Germanwas born in Wroclaw. She is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe. She received various prizes and grants such as the prize of the Academy of Fine Arts, Karlsruhe,Young Talent Saar Ferngas, a grant from the Art foundation of Baden-Wurttemberg. Patrycja presented her video works and performances atmany exhibitions and events. She lives and works in Berlin and Karlsruhe.

Łukasz Gronowski’s Untitled Works, part of the project called [In] Tension, takes us to Sopot, a territory or state of confusion where a stretch of water and thick fog become one. Time and space are suspended, enveloped in the quiet murmur of the waves, the song of seagulls and the whirr of an engine. Two laborers and a loader are working at the quayside. But what are they actually doing? The gestures they make seem unusual and irrational. All elements have been brought together to sow the seeds of doubt. Is it a game? A performance?

As in his other works, Łukasz Gronowski explores human rituals contained in trivial, sometimes absurd actions. He observes and captures their mechanisms. By isolating these moments, he gives them a new identity, a new body, and the territory becomes modified.

He studied at the Multimedia Communication Faculty of the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań. His work include video, photography, installations and the Internet. Gronowski is an initiator and founder of the Ikoon art collective and www.ikoon.art.pl website. In 2006 he received the scholarship of the Polish Ministry of the Culture. He lives and works in Warsaw.

Dominik Lejman, painting is performance. He uses video to define a new territory of painting, and give it new dimensions: movement and time. He attaches supreme importance to the way viewers can immerse in the work by direct contact with video transmission.

Skaters, described by the artist as a video fresco, involves a projection on the wall of a video in negative featuring an ice rink. White figures, small shadow-like, ghostly silhouettes, slide effortlessly crossing each other’s paths, not touching or recognizing each other. Dominik Lejman describes the ephemeral moments and aspects of a reality whose main feature is the contemporary crowd: anonymous, transitional, isolated and silent. He examines the position of an individual in modern society: the loss of individuality in the mass of other people, the lack of contact between people.

Dominik Lejman, a major talent among younger Polish contemporary artists who attracted international attention with innovative blending of traditional painting and contemporary media technology. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk and the Royal College of Art in London, and took part in over 18 solo and 25 group exhibitions in Poland and abroad. He works and lives in Gdynia.

Agnieszka Kalinowska’s Personal Doping shows a human chain traversing vertically the screen. Girls and boys with their heads down and legs up continue a slow slide holding the next person by their ankles, making joint progress. This evolution and the accompanying chirping of cicadas are mysterious and puzzling. The young people come from nowhere and have no definite destination. The intrinsic goal of these efforts seems to be to prevent the chain from breaking but the chain, subjected to excessive pressure, breaks from time to time.

Agnieszka Kalinowska examines the behavior of people in extreme circumstances. She captures moments of physical and psychological tension. She also asks questions about the medium of video as such. In this march of individuals the video frame defines the boundaries of a territory.

Agnieszka Kalinowska is a graduate of the Fine Arts Academy in Painting Department in Poznan. Her work includes video, sculpture and installation. She made numerous residences, among others in the Center Civitella Ranieri in Italy, Location One in New York, Pro Helvetia in Zurich. She took part in many expositions and festivals in Poland and abroad. She lives and works in Warsaw.