16.01 - 8.02.2009
Opening / performance 16.01.2009, at 6 p.m
Dorota Walentynowicz graduated from Gdańsk University with MA in Classical Studies (2001),Multimedia Communication Faculty of the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań (2005), the Royal Academy of Arts and the Royal Conservatory (the Hague, 2007). She was twice awarded the Scholarship of the Mayor of the City of Gdańsk and the City of Gdańsk, as well as the Cultural Scholarship of the City of Bremen, the HSP Huygens scholarship of the Dutch Government and the subsidy of Stichtung Niemeijer Fonds (Dordrecht, NL).
Dorota Walentynowicz’s art could be briefly described as conceptual – she is interested in
issues related with the definition of photography and its basic category – the light. Another important concern is the process of translation – of transferring the private space into objective experience. For Dorota Walentynowicz, art takes place in the space of interpersonal relations, and not in the hermetic, private, inner sphere. In her works, a special place is intended for the viewer. The process of interpreting and reading the meanings is constituted through the artist’s play with the viewer. The rules are imposed by the artist, who directs the situation herself. The participation of the viewer is the basic condition of the existence of the work, both in formal and substantial sphere – it completes the theoretical reflection. The central point of the installation Black Box is, obviously, a black box, the mysterious object, the mediator, inside which invisible processes will take place, similarly as in Flusserian “apparatus”: the meaning seems to penetrate the apparatus from one side (input), just to go out from the other (output), while the very act of going through, the occurrence inside the box remains hidden;
the mediator being the black box. The entirely automatic apparatus in Vilém Flusser’s philosophy do not need human intervention, yet for many of them participants are indispensable as players and servants.
Curator: Agnieszka Kulazińska