Lothringer 13 Studio,Lothringer Str. 13, 81667 München
Animals on my mind, 2022, installation viewZuza Piekoszewska, Old body, 2020, bioplastic, copper spray paintZuza Piekoszewska, The nest, 2022, jute, bioplasticAnimals on my mind, 2022, installation viewAnimals on my mind, 2022, installation viewZuza Piekoszewska, I’d rather not open my eyes, 2022, mixed media, fabric, fibre, juteZuza Piekoszewska, Ganglions, 2021, bioplasticZuza Piekoszewska, Home for troubled eggs, 2022, mixed mediaJulia Klemm, pack (series), 2022, ceramic, pigments, dimensions variableJulia Klemm, pack (series), 2022, ceramic, pigments, dimensions variableJulia Klemm, pack (series), 2022, ceramic, pigments, dimensions variableZuza Piekoszewska, Superrock, 2022, mixed mediaAnimals on my mind, 2022, installation viewJulia Klemm, pack (series), 2022, ceramic, pigments, dimensions variableZuza Piekoszewska, Serene morning on the cornfied, 2022, mixed mediaZuza Piekoszewska, The angular dog, 2022, mixed mediaJulia Klemm, pack (series), 2022, ceramic, pigments, dimensions variableJulia Klemm, pack (series), 2022, ceramic, pigments, dimensions variableJulia Klemm, pack (series), 2022, ceramic, pigments, dimensions variableZuza Piekoszewska, Complex problems, 2022, fibre on canvas
Last night I tried to think of the first animal I can remember. My grandmother’s black, shaggy dog perhaps? Or earlier, as my mother would say, the jellyfish that stung me on my wrist. I was only two then. Or earlier still I remember the fish on the beach I would make out of the warm sand. But maybe I am thinking about this wrong, maybe it is not about the actual animals I might or might not remember, but rather that all memories belong to the animal kingdom. Maybe memories are like animals.
First of all, there are the individual memories of different things that happened to us, personal memories like family pets, domesticated. Zuza Piekoszewska shows a small landscape of fields in the early morning mist as described to her by her parents. Elsewhere she remakes a kind of very specific dish cloth her mother used in mid-90s Poland, pastel, striped, homely. Julia Klemm’s lions do not prowl but play around the rubble like kittens. The lions though are a different type of memory. They belong not just to us, but to our culture, much like in the taxonomist’s biological classification, a species belongs to a genus. These animals are ordered along evolutionary lines, significant events of our shared past marking out a historical trajectory. These lions that Julia Klemm gathers, derives from 3D scans of bronze and stone lions dotted around European capitals, traditional symbols of strength, courage and nobility in our Judeo-Christian tradition.
Finally there are the memories of the pack, memories like the swarm of cicadas that emerge all together and so suddenly, after 17 years of underground sleep. History has no place for such memories; this kind of animal is missing from the taxonomist’s classification systems. It is less about individuals, identification and contextualisation and more about how to think the animal as already a population. Memories are never single – there is never the one lion. An animal before it is this or that animal, my animal, yours and ours, is an animal like another, but also different. I mean lions as the same but also as mutants, the repetition of genetic material always harbouring mutation. These memories of the pack are always unknowingly carried with us. I am a product of memories I do not even remember; we are a multiplicity of memories that history cannot contain. The most interesting things happen in between the lines, in shared proximities where the discernibility of points disappears. As Deleuze and Guattari write,
The line-system … of becoming is opposed to the point-system of memory. Becoming is the movement by which the line frees itself from the point, and renders points indiscernible…(Thousand Plateaus, 294)
Here becoming is an anti-memory. To really learn how to remember animals, we must first forget.
Zuza Piekoszewska, Natalia Karczewska, Magda Starska, Grzegorz Bożek, Paweł Marcinek und Przemysław Piniak
(curated by Łęctwo)
31.07 – 19.08.2022
Lothringer 13 Studio, Lothringer Straße 13, 81667 Munich
We breathe the remains of everything that was, 2022, exhibition viewZuza Piekoszewska, Future Traveller II, 2022, mixed media: bioplastic, spray paint, varnishZuza Piekoszewska, Future Traveller II, 2022, mixed media: bioplastic, spray paint, varnish (detail)Magda Starska, Volcano, 2012, assisted readymade: sideboard, kettle, plasterMagda Starska, Volcano, 2012, assisted readymade: sideboard, kettle, plaster (detail)We breathe the remains of everything that was, 2022, exhibition viewNatalia Karczewska, Avo-hat-touch, 2022, mixed media installation: wood, paper, textiles, lightbulb, pencil, marker, resin, plexi,Magda Starska, Together better, 2021, acrylic on canvasNatalia Karczewska, Avo-hat-touch, 2022, mixed media installation: wood, paper, textiles, lightbulb, pencil, marker, resin, plexi,Pawel Marcinek, Common Horizon, 2022, mixed media installation: umbrella wires, plaster, ashes, dustZuza Piekoszewska, Coarctate pupa, 2021, mixed media: bioplastic, linen and Future Traveller II, mixed media: bioplastic, spray paint, varnishZuza Piekoszewski, Future Traveller II, mixed media: bioplastic, spray paint, varnishPawel Marcinek, Feeling Secure, 2021, mixed media: iron, wood, plaster and Grzegorz Bozek, Gray Crow Spirit, 2022, egg tempera on wooden boardPawel Marcinek, Feeling Secure, 2021, mixed media: iron, wood, plaster
Grzegorz Bozek, Gray Crow Spirit, 2022, egg tempera on wooden boardPrzemyslaw Piniak, PylniceP, 2019, video installation, markerpen on cottonPrzemyslaw Piniak, PylniceP, 2019, video installation, markerpen on cottonPawel Marcinek, The year before, 2021, mixed media: burnt steering wheel, plasterPawel Marcinek, The year before, 2021, mixed media: burnt steering wheel, plasterPrzemyslaw Piniak, Niebieskis, blue-eyed mushroom found on Pucka island, 2022, paper and gold sweet-wrappers, wooden board
Opening Speech:
Many of you here know GiG from its days at Baumstr. 11. Some of you might even remember the last series of exhibitions there, ‘Thinking Nature’ featuring artists such as Elke Dreier, Johanna Strobel, Kalas Liebfried, Julia Klemm, Justin Liebermann, Lilian Robl and many others. This exhibition is a continuation of that series, but with a slight shift in focus: instead of thought, the theme is memory. How it relates to our thinking about nature remains unchanged.
For this exhibition, GiG invite Lectwo from Poznan, Poland, and its director, Przemek Sowiński to be the curator. He in turn responded to the theme through this idea of ‘breath’ as something physical, something shared and something transformative. We breathe out slowly when we hear something surprising – we inhale sharply in fear. Together with our heartbeat, breathing structures our sense of time, each breath already past, present and future. If when thinking, the concept of memory often becomes too much like the concept of history, a series of events arranged according to importance, the memories held in a breath have a linearity free from such punctuation. They are alive.
As an introduction to the exhibition, Dr. Sebastian Truskolaski traveling from Berlin, kindly agreed to hold a brief discussion of Adorno’s short text, ‘Heliotrope’. We chose thistext together as a good way of engaging with the themes of the exhibition: breathing, memory, nature (Heliotropism being the ability of plants to turn towards the sun). The text takes the shape of Adorno’s childhood memory. A glamorous aunt comes to visit, carrying suitcases with stickers from exotic locations. Little Theodor breaths in the heavy scent of her French perfume and is immediately transported to the world of grown-ups, which is also a long-lost fairyland. The child at once gains access to a foreign land, and recovers what he once had.
Zuza Piekoszewska, Natalia Karczewska, Magda Starska, Grzegorz Bożek, Paweł Marcinek und Przemysław Piniak
(curated by Łęctwo)
31.07 – 19.08.2022
Lothringer 13 Studio, Lothringer Straße 13, 81667 Munich
Opening: Sunday 31st July, 3 – 8 pm
Guest Speaker: Dr. Sebastian Truskolaski, 6 pm
Zuza Piekoszewska, Future Traveller, 2020, metal, bioplastic and acrylic
‘We breathe the remains of everything that was’ is the first of the exhibition series ‘Re-collection’ organised by GiG Munich at Lothringer 13 Studio from July to December 2022.
GiG Munich is currently operating nomadically as GiG air, presenting work at different locations both physical and virtual. For 2022, Lothringer 13 Halleinvited GiG Munich to produce the ‘Re-collection’ exhibition series at the Lothringer 13 Studio, a continuation of the previous series ‘Thinking Nature’ that took place at GiG Munich in 2021, For this first exhibition at a new location, GiG Munich collaborates with the hybrid space Łęctwo run by Przemek Sowiński, to present the work of Zuza Piekoszewska, Natalia Karczewska, Magda Starska, Grzegorz Bożek, Paweł Marcinek and Przemysław Piniak.
If GiG Munich’s focus has always been the more abstract and theoretical, Łęctwo’s interests tend to lie in the immediate and physical, as well as the intimate. Łęctwo’s programme of contemporary art always has had this utopian element, art as a deeply personal drive to transform the surrounding reality, enacting real change in our cognitive lives. In their exhibition together, GiG Munich and Łęctwo look together at the idea of cultural memory, in relation to nature, biology and human.
“Wir atmen die Überreste von allem, was war” ist der erste Teil der Ausstellungsreihe “Re-collection”, die von GiG Munich im Lothringer 13 Studio von Juli bis Dezember 2022 organisiert wird.
GiG Munich ist derzeit als GiG air nomadisch aktiv und präsentiert Arbeiten an verschiedenen Orten, sowohl physisch als auch virtuell. Für 2022 hat die Lothringer 13 Halle GiG Municheingeladen, die Ausstellungsreihe “Re-collection” im Lothringer 13 Studio zu produzieren in Fortsetzung der Reihe “Thinking Nature”, die 2021 bei GiG Munich stattfand. Für diese erste Ausstellung an einem neuen Ort kooperiert GiG Munich mit Łęctwo von Przemek Sowiński und zeigt Arbeiten von Zuza Piekoszewska, Natalia Karczewska, Magda Starska, Grzegorz Bożek, Paweł Marcinek und Przemysław Piniak.
Während sich GiG Munich seit jeher auf das Abstrakte und Theoretische konzentriert, liegt das Interesse von Łęctwo eher im Unmittelbaren und Körperlichen sowie im Intimen. Das Programm von Łęctwo für zeitgenössische Kunst hatte schon immer diesen utopischen Aspekt, da es die Kunst als einen zutiefst persönlichen Antrieb zur Veränderung der uns umgebenden Realität ansieht, der einen echten Wandel in unserem kognitiven Leben bewirkt. In ihrer gemeinsamen Ausstellung befassen sich GiG Munich und Łęctwo mit der Idee des kulturellen Gedächtnisses in Bezug auf die Natur, die Biologie und die menschliche Existenz.
Na każdych kroku trafiamy na rozciągnięte w czasie pozostałości naszej własnej egzystencji. Szczątki i pyły poprzedniego istnienia przenikają nasze płuca, przywołując pamięć tego co robili nasi przodkowie. Pozostawione przez nas rzeczy stają się surowcami nowych procesów, a śmierćjest tylko epizodem nigdy niekończocęgo się cyklu. W tym wszystkim najbardziej realna wydaje się teraźniejszość, ale czmyże jest skoro ciągle się od nas odsuwa. Każdy nasz oddech wypełnia atmosferę, stając się przeszłością w chwili zaczerpnięcia nowego. Każdy nasz wydech zawiera ułamek przewidywanej przyszłości. Te dwa czasy pozostają w ścisłej relacji. Być może odzyskujemy to, co już dawno zniknęło nam z zasięgu wzroku. Ciągłość rzeczy, w której każda materia, przeszłość i przyszłość przenikają do nas horyzontalnie, nie tylko na poziomie odczuwania metafizycznego, ale realnej zmiany genów, dając nadzieję na zupełnie inną, hybrydyczną formę istnienia.
Przemek Sowiński
At every step, we encounter the remnants our own existence spread out in time. The debris and dust of our previous lives penetrate our lungs, evoking the memory of what our ancestors did. The things left behind by us become the raw materials of new processes, and death is only an episode of a never ending cycle. In all of this, the present seems to be the most real, but what is this present, when it always moves away from us? Each of our breaths fills the atmosphere, becoming the past with every new gulp of air we inhale. Each exhaled breath contains a fraction of the foreseeable future.These two times remains in close relation.Perhaps we are recovering what has long since disappeared from our sight. The continuity of things, in which all matter, past and future permeate us horizontally, not only at the level of metaphysical feeling, but of real genetic transformation, giving hope for a completely different, hybrid form of being.
trans. Magdalena Wisniowska
Auf Schritt und Tritt stoßen wir auf die zeitlich gestreckten Überreste unserer eigenen Existenz. Der Schutt und Staub unseres früheren Lebens dringt in unsere Lungen ein und ruft die Erinnerung an das hervor, was unsere Vorfahren getan haben. Die Dinge, die wir zurückgelassen haben, werden zu Rohstoffen für neue Prozesse, und der Tod ist nur eine Episode in einem nie endenden Kreislauf. In all dem scheint die Gegenwart am realsten zu sein, aber wie kann die das sein, wenn sie sich ständig von uns entfernt. Jeder Atemzug, den wir nehmen, füllt die Atmosphäre und wird in dem Moment, in dem wir einen neuen Atemzug nehmen, zur Vergangenheit. Jedes Ausatmen enthält einen Bruchteil der vorhersehbaren Zukunft. Diese beiden Zeiten stehen in engem Zusammenhang. Vielleicht holen wir zurück, was schon lange aus unserem Blickfeld verschwunden ist. Die Kontinuität der Dinge, in der alle Materie, Vergangenheit und Zukunft uns horizontal durchdringen, nicht nur auf der Ebene des metaphysischen Gefühls, sondern der realen genetischen Transformation, die Hoffnung auf eine völlig andere, hybride Form des Daseins gibt.