With the presentation of a work by Czech artist Eva Kotatkova in the Rotunda and a newly acquired work by Ukrainian artist Maria Kulikovska in another space of the Xawery Dunikowski National Museum of Sculpture in the Krolikarnia Palace, the Art Collection Telekom takes part at the Warsaw Gallery Weekend 2016.
The exhibition anticipates a larger survey exhibition with works from the Art Collection Telekom in all spaces of the Krolikarnia during September and October 2017.
Eva Kot'átková´s Educational Model, 2009, is presented in the Rotunda of Krolikarnia. The artist was born 1982 in Prague, then capital of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.
Some tables and stools are standing alone, some are building up groups, some are standing on top of each other, some are plugged together and are offering an option to climb up to a higher level. Each visitor can sit down, relax, look around and define his or her position in the overall structure and in relation to the other levels and participants in the game. This work by Czech artist Eva Kot'átková can generate a social and psychological game with a playful and changeable setting of high and low, of above and below, of together and alone.
Such a structure of relations is determined in real life often not by free choice but rather by coercion, submission, restraint, control and command. All these are instruments and tools of dominance and power, which play also an important part in education.
Education, as a process to develop the abilities of the mind, to train practical skills and to learn social rules and societal behaviour, is quite often visualized by using the image of a pyramid. It’s a reasonable model to demonstrate the hierarchical steps and levels deeper knowledge and understanding or better skills might be rising up to. It might be also a good image to show the social ladder and possibilities higher education offers for possible social advancement. What might determine the social and emotional position of the individual by schooling, formation and shaping of temper and predisposition turns in the work Educational Model by Eva Kot'átková into a playful setting.
The next room shows Homo Bulla (white, red, green), 2015, by Maria Kulikovska. She was born 1988 in the harbour city of Kerch on the peninsula with the same name, which forms the eastern part of Crimea. She studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kiev and achieved 2013 a master in fine arts and architecture. After the occupation and annexation of Crimea through Russia, she became a registered refugee with nr 254 in her own country.
The three sculptures are made from coloured soap and have been casted from her own body. In 2012 Maria Kulikovska had realized a similar series of these translucent bodies, which are mysteriously shining, like precious gems from their inner core. They where installed on the site of a former factory for insulation materials in Donetsk, Ukraine. The area of the abandoned buildings was home to the Izolyatsia Foundation, which focussed on promoting and giving a home to contemporary art in the former heavy industries region in the Eastern part of Ukraine and is now active in exile in Kiev. The soap sculptures were placed outside and exposed to rain, heat and weather. The process of change and partly, but continuous dissolution of the materials by nature, was stopped abruptly by violence. In June 2014, militia of the self-proclaimed ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ seized the territory. Most of the artworks and facilities were vandalized and the sculptures were used for target practising.
The two artists presented at the Krolikarnia, as divergent as they seem to be, are an excellent example to demonstrate the range of the artistic voices that can be heard in Europe today.
