Mala Gallery
8, Zamkowy Sq., Warsaw (Old Town)
September 4-26, 2001
Tomasz Konart
Brothers and Sisters
http://myfamily.5tk.net/
In every photograph there are hidden thousands of tiny details, each picture is a collection of different inscrutable wholes. Photography registers - besides what is seen by a naked eye - phenomenona that we'll come to know about only in the future and also these that will never be available to us. We cannot rule out that something we did not feel related to in any way will suddenly prove to be very close to us. It seems like Tomasz Konart was frequented by such thoughts while working upon his Brothers and Sisters project.
When he found himself "on the other side of the world", in Canada, more than ten years ago he met in his new surroundings people with features similiar to those of his acquaintances and friends he had left in his home country. Some of them appeared to be identical. After some time he found it not to be true. Some more time passed and it occured to him that the lines of similiarities ran in a quite different way. Eventually the perception of identity of all people "involved" in these dealings began to change constantly.
A symbolic presentation of this experience is a play with names the artist named protagonists of his series of photographs. Incidentally, the originals of these photographs were found in a Toronto antique shop and presented persons utterly strange to him. Tomasz Konart stressed the power of prevailing syndrome of recording, storage, processing, publishing and reinterpretation. This phenomenon grows stronger with dissemination of the Internet which enables us access to endless details from lives of people about which we still do not have any idea that they exist at all.
Digital technologies of recording and processing of informations bring incredible opportunities to build up huge archives of details. Voyeuristic tendency had grown - according to the artist - to monstrous dimensions. Everything can be publicised and exposed to daylight. But not everything is unequivocal - photography confirms it more than any other art form. On one hand it is a cool recording to which we refer after years not always finding this what supposed to be recorded at the time of picture's origination.
But on the other hand, as it will turn out later, it carries so many inscrutable and impossible to interprete univocally facts, images, messages. It makes us to look back in a different way, with greater humility and care for details in order not to miss anything essential since it can change completly the meaning of what supposed to be preserved for ever. It regards not only objects or landscapes but also people.
M.G.
TOMASZ KONART
Tomek Konart in Warsaw, September 2001
born 1955 in Warsaw
lives in TorontoAcademic prepartion:
1975-80 National School of Film Theater and TV, Lodz, Poland
1999 B.A.A. in New Media, Ryerson University, Toronto, CanadaIndividual shows:
1980: Excercises in Photography, Foto-Medium-Art, Wroclaw.
1983: Sound Installations for Birds, Pracownia Dziekanka, Warsaw
1984: Tractatus Chaoticus, Mala Galeria ZPAF, Warsaw
1985: Intersubjective Investigations, Labirynt 2, Lublin.
1985: The Critical Point, Kunststation Kleinsassen, Germany
1986: 1,2,3, Piwna 20/26, Warsaw
1988: Five Towns, Piwna 20/26, Warsaw
1997: Polish Gothics, Studio Wizja, Paris, France
Selected group shows
1975: Seven Polish Artists, Kunstahalle Malmoe, Sweden
1978: Unidentified Activities, Labirynt, Lublin - STK, Lodz
1978: The Youn Artists Bienial, Sopot
1978: Fotografia - Stan Aktualny, Pracownia Dziekanka, Warsaw
1979: Works and Words, Foundation De Appel, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
1980: Group T, Trace, Lodz
1981: Construction in Process, Lodz
1985: Prozess und Konstruktion, Munich, Germany
1985: Contemporary Art from Poland, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, Canada
1987: Freiraum, Kunststation Kleinsassen, Germany
1987: International Artist's Book Exhibition, Istvan Király Museum, Szekesfehervar, Hungary
1988: Konkrekt Acht, Nurnberg, Germany
1988: Drawing Triennial, Wroclaw, Poland
1988: null-dimension, New Space, Fulda, Germany
1990: A book and what next, Raczynski Library, Poznan, Poland
1991: Polnische Avantgarde und Malerbücher, Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbuettel, Germany
1992: Pages and Books, CSW, Warsaw
1993: International Artist's Book Exhibition, National Gallery, Budapest, Hungary
1997: WebWeavers Wokshop, Interaccess, Toronto, Canada
1997: Polish Avant-guarde Books, Artpool, Budapest, Hungary
1998: Tactile Video, Interaccess, Toronto, CanadaThe previous exhibition of Tomasz Konart in the Mala Gallery was held in October 1984.
Tomasz Konart - "Brothers and Sisters", exhibition in Mala Gallery in Warsaw. Opening: Spt 4, 2001. Photo Grazyna Jaworska/GW
Tomasz Konart (left) and Donald P. McLennan, Ambassador of Canada in Poland. Mala Gallery, Spt. 4, 2001. Photo Krzysztof Wojciechowski.
At Mala Gallery in Warsaw, on Spt. 4, 2001. In front from left: the artist, Tomasz Konart, Canada's Ambassador to Poland, Donald P. McLennan, and Delfina Swieckowska, Academic and Cultural Relations Officer at Canadian Embassy. Photo Krzysztof Wojciechowski.
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