Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski w Warszawie
Galeria Wejście
25 marca - 3 maja 2011 r.
Kurator: Marek Grygiel

Zygmunt Rytka, Krzysztof Wojciechowski: When I’m Sixty-Four

Krzysztof Wojciechowski, from "Trivia" series, 2010

This “birthday” exhibition of Zygmunt Rytka and Krzysztof Wojciechowski is a presentation of current works of these two artists using photographic medium. In spite of that they started to realize their works before the idea of common show arose both “Traces – evidences of existence” of Rytka and “Trivia” of Wojciechowski refer strongly to the past, time and vanishing. The first of the two artists refers directly to his past using biographical elements while the other employed a more generalized approach.

“Evidences of existence” are a presentation of selected documents that all people living in civilized world receive and use during their life. For authorities or bureaucracy they are just that – the evidence of existence of a person, sometimes more important than such person itself. Rytka by giving such inevitably ironic title to these documents seems to suspend their interpretation between assumption of futility of human efforts and pride of being human being in multiple ways: as artist, electrician, father or bus passenger.

The set of objects referring to his artistic biography being a presentation of media he used creates an area marked with another traces, the area in which “bearer of document” – the artist – “identifies” himself not with cards with more or less impressive seals but with references to his works and techniques.

This inspiring serious reflections work that in a way summarizes the artist’s life completes a selection of quotations he thinks are important . The very last quotation is a wise statement of Yogi the Bear warning before hasty recapitulations: “Nothing is finished before it is finished”.

“Trivia” of Krzysztof Wojciechowski are to some degree a recapitulation of motifs present in his earlier works. Simple, everyday events were up to now presented as series of separate pictures, now he shows them as “enlarged proof prints” registering on one sheet of photographic paper four stages of a particular process, what enhances impression of time changes (or their lack). The result is a dozen or so pictures making a kind of catalogue of more or less obtrusive metaphors of passing, lasting or emerging.

The works of Zygmunt Rytka and Krzysztof Wojciechowski can be placed in broadly understood area of media art. They both started their artistic adventure in early 1970s. They belonged to circles connected with the Remont Gallery in Warsaw where they participated actively in many events of avant-garde nature. In the mid-1970s they also started their cooperation with the Mala Gallery where during almost 30 years they presented for the first time most of their works.

Zygmunt Rytka from the very beginning apart from photography used video, installations and photographic objects. Krzysztof Wojciechowski who was at the beginning focused on so called “straight photography” also realized photographic installations and objects.

Their birthday exhibition in the CCA – Zamek Ujazdowski not only emphasizes their generational ties but also is an attempt to relate in a humorous way their recent works to passing of time and changes that underwent techniques of recording image, its transformations and inferences that may associate it today from perspective of passing time.