Mala Gallery
8, Zamkowy Sq., Warsaw (Old Town)
April 30 - May 31, 2002
Krzysztof Cichosz - Hybrid Portraits
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Krzysztof Cichosz - "Hybrid Portraits" |
XPERIMENT in art will be present always. What Krzysztof Cichosz has been doing from years is just a kind of a long lasting experiment - it is consistent searching for still new meanings and contexts in the area of photography and striving to present photography in new forms.
Photography constitutes a starting element for the work of Krzysztof Cichosz who in his spatial realisations having character of three dimensional installations is fragmenting photographic pictures. Later he would put these fragments together according to strictly defined rules making thus illusion of three dimensional representation. These installation link together problems of time (being essential of photography) and space.
Krzysztof Cichosz besides his own artistic work has been incessantly from 20 years running the FF Gallery in Lodz, one of the most renowned photographic galleries in Poland and teaches photography. He cooperated in realisation of some important exhibitions, e.g. "Change of Guards" and the most recent, much talked about exhibition "Around decade - Polish Photography of 90's"
Marek Grygiel
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Krzysztof Cichosz - "Hybrid Portraits" |
Dear Marek,
During my preparations for my new photographic installation I looked through many books on history of philosophy in search for portraits of philosophers. Because of varied - historically conditioned - style of representation I limited my choice of images to the Graeco-Roman period. I selected the nine portraits of philosophers from this period - the principle of choice was not substantial (unfortunately) but visual, subdordinated to the aesthetic principles of this work. I processed these chosen portraits using computer in order to endow them with uniform visual form. I divided each of these portraits into six parts. Then I wrote a very short program whose aim was to make random selection of a fragment of portrait. This way the final installations were made: the nine hybrid portraits each of them consists of six haphazardly assembled from fragments of faces of the nine philosophers.
The printing screen destructing and constructing these portraits was made through introduction of machine code of computer to a word processing program - I was always fascinated with these strange "bushes". I think also, that they they suggest visually the time of "cyberculture".
This realisation in its symbolic aspect is - as it always was in my works - a personal comment upon the world that surrounds me. We are living in a period of domination of the post-modern culture marked by surplus production of everything, including informations and ideas. No one of us (probably) can comprehend and control anymore the mass of FACTS and IDEAS that is flooding us and more so to analyse it and link it all into coherent image of the world. But such an image is NECESSARY to enable us proper functioning in the world and to evaluate this world's phenomena. We take pieces out of this over-abundance - pieces, parts which we put together into some approximate, surrogate picture - different for the each person and for the each time... and relying on such a picture we take meaningful decisions concerning ourselves and other people! These "Hybrid Portraits" (dedicated to philosophy) are just visualisation of such a situation... Each of presented "portraits" is almost REAL, somehow familiar to us. But the question is if any of these images is TRUE to at least some extent?
Krzysztof Cichosz,
Lodz, April 10, 2002.
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Krzysztof Cichosz - "Hybrid Portraits" |
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Krzysztof Cichosz
born 1955
Education:
1985-1989 - The Warsaw College of Photography.
1999-2002 - The Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan.
Krzysztof Cichosz work includes documentary, sociological and creative photography and electronic media as well. He developed his own, unique method of making big size three dimensional photographic installations which comprisise photography with elements of painting, sculpture and electronic techniques. He participated in many exhibitions in Poland and abroad. He was awarded for his artistic work and his organisational activities. He originated the idea of the Galeria FF (Forum of Photography) founded in Lodz in 1983 and has been this Gallery's curator from the begining. He organised as a curator a number of collective exhibitions.
He is working as a lecturer in the Higher Film School and the Higher Humanistic-Economic School in Lodz. Member of the Union of Polish Art Photographers.
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Krzysztof Cichosz - "Hybrid Portraits" |
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