GRANDE PLAGE
Jagna Ciuchta
Curated by Sonia Dermience and Alberto García del Castillo
KOMPLOT
295, Avenue Van Volxemlaan
1190 Brussels
Belgium
Thursday 20th June – Friday 30th August
As is often the case in Jagna Ciuchta’s work, Missing Alina is a project in various stages : it encompasses several exhibitions – or, more precisely, a single palimpsest exhibition in multiple venues – in which the same objects were subjected to successive transformations. It arose out of a retrospective exhibition of work by Polish artist Alina Szapocznikow, which, among other places, traveled to the Wiels Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels and MoMA in New York. After having photographed the empty exhibition design (the white walls and empty vitrines) in these two venues, Ciuchta meticulously re-created various elements of the scenography, which she chose both for their sculptural quality and in association with the works by Szapoczikow that they had served to display. The reconstructed freestanding walls and vitrines were then modified over time as Ciuchta rematerialized them in each new exhibition.
Following in the wake of Daniel Buren, Andrea Fraser and other artists working in the tradition of institutional critique, Ciuchta literally gives center stage to the forms and language that frame the art both physically and discursively, thus drawing attention to the power structures that underpin the supposedly neutral ‘white cube’. But Ciuchta’s project also resonates on an emotional level despite, or probably thanks to, its apparently dry and restrained form. Not only does Missing Alina evoke the mixed feelings of admiration and anxiety often experienced between various generations of (women) artists ; it also speaks of memory, loss and translation in relation to exhibitions. What remains when the art is gone ? How is the viewer’s imagination called to fill the blank ? And for the artist, how can she create when her blank canvas is always already full with memories of past works and exhibitions ?
For the current exhibition at Komplot in Brussels entitled Grande Plage, the artist chose to introduce softness and indeterminacy into the display by transforming the scenographic element into sagging, slumped sculptures made of sewn thick fabric that she artist has hand-painted. For the next and final installment of Missing Alina (New York, 2014), these sculptures will become a fluid hosting structure for a collective exhibition.
Maud Jacquin
*Alina Szapocznikow : Sculpture Undone, 1955–1972, curated by Elena Filipovic and Joanna Mytkowska. The exhibition was organized by WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels (October 9, 2011 – January 8, 2012) and the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, in collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art, New York (October 7, 2012 – January 28, 2013) and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. The exhibition travelled to the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio.
The project Missing Alina is supported by CNAP, la Ville de Montreuil and Residency Unlimited. The exhibition Grande Plage is supported by the Polish Institute (Cultural Service of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Brussels), Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Gemeente Vorst, Vedett.
http://www.kmplt.be/
http://www.jagnaciuchta.com/
