MAGDALENA BORS

ul. Strajku Dokerów 5, Gdańsk NOWY PORT

8 November 2013 – 5 January 2014 

 

Opening:  8 November,  6 pm

Curator: Anna Szynwelska 

 

 

Magdalena Bors’ fantastical constructed images suggest a homely magic brought into being by obsessive desire. This exhibition presents works from two series made between 2006 and 2011. In the first series, Homelands, fairy-tale scenes grow from the mundane materials and bric-a-brac of everyday domesticity. Wool winds its way into an Arcadian landscape secreted below the coffee table; spilled sugar lumps rise up from the kitchen floor to form an enchanted castle. The works draw subtly upon European folklore, absorbing the essence without being tied to a specific narrative. But they also contain echoes of Australia in subtle resonances with a more contemporary mythologising of the antipodean landscape.

If Homelands  engages our wish for something magical beyond the humdrum of daily life, Magdalena Bors’ second series, The Seventh Day, turns more squarely to explore the entanglement of creation and compulsion. In each, an iconic landscape has been recreated in an unlikely form and location. Jigsaw puzzles coalesce into a vivid coral reef; stacks of old newspapers are sculpted into the likeness of The Twelve Apostles, a geological tourist attraction on the south coast of the Australian state of Victoria; the unique forms of the Bungle Bungles (a range of mountains in Western Australia) have been crocheted into being. Yet for all their industry, the makers regard the results of their labour with a look of perplexity. What obsession drove them to create these scenes in the first place? Is the act of creation a form of madness?

 

Magdalena Bors was born in 1976 in Antwerp, Belgium, and now lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. She has a Bachelor degree in Arts, Photography from RMIT University, Melbourne and has exhibited several places in Australia and Europe. Her work was showcased in Phantasia, an exhibition curated by Alasdair Foster that toured in Australia and was presented at the Photoquai festival in Paris in 2009. Subsequently, Simon Gregg featured her work in his book ‘New Romantics: Darkness and Light in Australian Art’ (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2011) which maps "a return to passion in art, and a return to atmosphere and awe".The exhibition "The Art of Domestic Compulsion" at Laznia CCA in Gdansk is Magdalena Bors´ first presentation in Poland.

Find more information about the artist: www.magdalenabors.com