Mala Gallery ZPAF-CSW
8, Zamkowy Sq., Warsaw
April 4-28, 2000
Bruno Wagner "Light years ... ago" - Mala Gallery, Warsaw, April 2000
Light years ... ago.
Towards city,
a car, a highway, beyond fields, infinite monochrome blueness,
first tri-coloured lights, stop,
first human being, tied trees, suburbs, safety belt, a paper sheet with handwritten words "Please give me 1 franc",
childhood memories, shoved out board with "I am donkey" written in chalk, no man's land, the car starts.
Midtown,
national bank, a corso, a herbicide, a safety system camera, Disneyland,
motorised police, everything 10 francs a piece, employment office,
cheapy marianna,
dog's turds, son of a bitch, Miss Bluff contest.
Naked, a niche, neon sign, jewelery, numbered, nepotism, matches ...
Sleeping room,
Sleeping belladonna, a town in fire, rabbits jumping in night dreams,
a little danse macbre, she-wolf looks for her prey to feed a child,
overeaten hipermarkets explode, an accordion weeps somewhere at a distance,
the one who penetrates walls wakes up and passes through nightmares.
Darkness. Silence.Bruno Wagner
Bruno Wagner "Light years ... ago" - Mala Gallery, Warsaw, April 2000
Bruno Wagner
born 1965Theatre photographer.
He animates photographic courses and image workshops for children. Founding member of the group "Lucette Omnibus", which aim is, inter alia, to present young contemporary photography to wider audience through organisation of photographic events, happenings, spectacles, exhibitons ... (Photo-Comptoirs, etc.). He is also interested in theatre, takes part in realisation of spectacles, makes scenography and slide projections.
Bruno Wagner "Light years ... ago" - Mala Gallery, Warsaw, April 2000
Bruno Wagner "Light years ... ago" - Mala Gallery, Warsaw, April 2000
Theatre of memory
I have encountered works of Bruno Wagner for the first time three years ago in a tiny gallery with the Polish name "Pochodzenie" in the old town of Touluse. The pictures presented there were very personal documentation of the Tadeusz Kantor spectacle "Today is my birthday". The premiere of this play took place just in Touluse on January 10th 1991. Urszula Czartoryska who witnessed this premiere years ago has found on one of photographs her friend, Kantor's actress Elzbieta Krasinska who participated in this spectacle.
In Touluse the photographs of Bruno Wagner brought back her memories about close friend and now, when Urszula Czartoryska is no longer among us, they vivify memories about herself.
Thus photographs of Bruno Wagner do bring back memory in a similiar way like the Theatre of Kantor does. "The theatre of memory was the theatre of death"* - and in case of Bruno Wagner memory is negation of death. Poetic pictures do not record any particular situation or event - they are rather attempt to create poetic visions on the border line between reality and dream, they are trying to bring back what was before, what mercilessly goes away.
They are also dreams what the title of one of the pictures suggests. The dreams filled with hope that photography can retain somewhat of transitoriness of passed events. That photography can bring back memory about people, events, things which last only transitorily in our consciousness. Photography can enliven this memory, even so personal photography like that of Bruno Wagner. . The pictures from "Light years ... ago" series also contain elements of dreams, they pass the limits of relity, they become a kind of theatre of dreams since theatre is a favourite inspiration for the artist - when he was recording Kantor's play and also when he is building his individual creation lined with mystery and understatement.
Marek Grygiel
*Jan Kott "Pages on Tadeusz Kantor", Slowo/obraz Terytoria, Gdansk, 1997
Bruno Wagner "Light years ... ago" - Mala Gallery, Warsaw, April 2000
Bruno Wagner "Light years ... ago" - Mala Gallery, Warsaw, April 2000
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