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collections

Kunstkamera

By All Works, collections, conceptual photography, mise-en-abyme, photomontage

Kunstkamera is a photographic installation consisting in an imaginary collection of photographs, shown in an especially designed hexagonal room, and creating a visual and intellectual game for the viewer.The title, Kunstkamera, refers on the one hand to the “Wunderkammer” and “Kunstkammer” of the Renaissance: cabinets of curiosities and art, typologies of extraordinary exhibits aiming at showing the world in miniature. On the other hand, the Kunstkammers were also paintings representing these very cabinets, where the painter would include hidden meanings only readable by the initiated. The Kunstkamera installation contains both the collection of curiosities, in the form of various photographs, and the photograph representing the collection, thus creating a mise en abyme, with the photograph of the collection inside the collection, which is itself represented in a photograph, and so on. Practically, the installation consists of a hexagonal room, with two entrances opposite each other. The room is thus divided in two: the photographs are symmetrically organised with respect the line created by the two entrances.

Each half room contains two side walls, on which are hanging the photographs of the collection, and a central wall displaying the image representing the room itself. The game begins when the viewer gets acquainted with the photographs, the way they are organised on the walls, and what they represent. As in the “kunstkammer” of old, this one contains all sorts of visual and narrative riddles. The topics of the photographs are the keys to these riddles. On the one hand they refer to tradition of the “kunstkammer”, the very fact of collecting, and the narcissistic obsessions related to it. On the other hand, they refer to my own private obsessions as a photographer: my tendency to create symmetries and repetitions, and to use a creative instrument which I felt prisoner of, which is the idea of series in photography.

The very fact of taking pictures in series is a form of collecting and also an obsession, and Kunstkamera is an attempt to embody this idea of series in photography, and ultimately exceed it. That is the reason why the central photograph representing the collection shows different images than those physically hanging on the walls: these are all series whose subsequent images appear only in the mise en abyme of the central photograph. A final and invisible motif consists in that most of the photographs are hoaxes, either visual (what they show is impossible) or narrative (the description I give them is false). Mystification, through digital manipulation, has indeed become an integral part of photography today, and it seemed necessary to me to include some in Kunstkamera, as ultimate riddles for the viewer to discover.

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The Library

By All Works, catoptric chests, collections, mise-en-abyme

The Library project is not the representation of a specific library, but rather an attempt at representing the very essence of the idea of a library. It is loosely inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ novel The Library of Babel, where the author describes the universe as an “infinite and cyclic” library. The project is thus an attempt at showing, through a photographic installation, the library as an infinite gathering of books, but that can be contained in a single book.

If one assumes that a library has three main functions, that is to gather books, to stock them and archive them, and to make them available to the public, it is possible to phrase the following statements. First, as a library is, by nature, a place where books are gathered, it is potentially infinite, because books, and thus knowledge, knows no boundaries and is constantly expanding. And second, a library may contain a book on libraries, or even the list of all books in that particular library, which means that a library is simultaneously the container and the content of the same subject matter

The Library is a photographic installation developed upon the above-mentioned propositions. In its simplest form, the installation is composed of six elements (photographic objects and installations) laid down in a circle. These elements are the following:

A fake book, i.e. a photographic object imitating one of the books of the library, life size;
A fake bookshelf, i.e. a photograph imitating one of the bookshelves of the library, life size;
The Never-Ending Wall of Books, i.e. a photograph of a bookshelf placed in a light box and shown in mirrors, in order to create the illusion of a wall spreading endlessly in all directions;
The Never-Ending Corridor of Books, i.e. two photographs of bookshelves placed in light boxes and shown in mirrors, in order to create the illusion of a corridor sprawling endlessly;
The library building i.e. a light box representing a miniature library;
A real book, which is the alter ego of the fake book, where one can find a photograph of the miniature library building.

In this setting, watching the installation is like a backward tracking, starting from a book, where each additional step backward places the viewer in a higher position, and ending where it has started.

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The revolution eats its own…

By All Works, photographic objects, collections, conceptual photography, site-specific

The Revolution eats its own… is a site specific piece commissioned to celebrate the 21th anniversary of the first free elections of June 1989 in Poland.

The piece was located in the historic printing house Dom Slowa Polskiego, which in the 1950’s printed communist propaganda, and in the early 1990’s the first non-communist newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. However, with the economic changes that occured in Poland after 1989, this printing house has been shut down, as the value of its site being far greater than itslef, and a new office complex will take its place.

The Revolution eats its own… is a visual and photographic comment to this situation. Georg Büchner said that a revolution is like Saturn, it devours its own children, and it seems the capitalist one is no exception to that rule. The printing house is currently in the process of selling all its assets, be it its land, walls, or machines. In a way, it has been a victim of its own activity, as it is the freedom (be it political, but also economic), that it has promoted (with the printing of Gazeta Wyborcza), that has led to its demise.

I have chosen to photograph different parts of the printing house : machines, furniture, walls, and present them as three-dimensional objects that actually look like books, from a distance. They are displayed in an exhibition cabinet that was used to show the printing house’s products, since it seems that they are the few remaining things that the printing house is capable of producing.

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Mausoleum

By All Works, collections, site-specific

In the Mausoleum, Grospierre and Mokrzycka reproduced on a life-size scale the private collection of stuffed animals of Nugzar Dzanishia, who shot them and stuffed them all by himself. More precisely, this collection of 700 animals is the only “living” space of a huge cultural and commercial complex of the 1970’s, now abandonned under the Republic Square in Tblisi, Georgia. Grospierre and Mokrzycka then transfered this photographic frieze in the abandonned underground club-lounge below the Tribune at the foot of the Palace of Culture in Warsaw, where the Communist dignitaries used to assist at the military parades on May 1st. The 15 metre long frieze takes us not only to another place, but also back in time. It is a reference to the wunderkammer of old, but also to the time when propaganda kept hidden what was happening in real life. In this way the stuffed animals, placed in the social realistic interiors of the Tribune are relics of a past, which, not without any reason, is currently being burried.

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The Oval Offices

By All Works, architecture, collections, documentary

The Oval Offices is a photographic enquiry into the life-size replicas of the office of the President of the United States, the Oval Office. There are over 25 replicas of the Oval Office and the number keeps on growing. Each replica is different: some try to recreate the space of a specific president, while the others are more the embodiment of an idea, than the exact representation of the actual room.

In addition to the images, Grospierre has embarked into an in-depth study of the archaeology of the Oval Office, ranging fro the history of the room, to the symbolics of the oval, and the contemporary use of the room by Hollywood, and whose ultimate goal is to understand the reason for such a proliferation of replicas.

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The collection which grows

By All Works, collections, conceptual photography, mise-en-abyme

The collection, which grows is based on the idea that a series of photographs should be organised in such a way that each successive photograph in the series is the result of the previous one and would be impossible without it. I have in the past already used this concept for two works: The picture, which grows (2011) and The house, which grows (2012). Metaphorically, one could compare this idea to the growth of a tree: first comes the trunk, then the branches, and then the leaves. And it is impossible for the leaves to grow with branches, not the branches without the trunk.

In The collection, which grows, this concept is used in its simplest form, and yet one which is perhaps the most demanding. The first image of The collection which grows (photo #0) represents an anonymous grey space, unidentifiable. This photograph forms the basis onto which the series will grow. Indeed, the second photograph (photo #1) represents a gallery space, where photo #0 is hanging on the wall. The third photograph (photo #2) represents another gallery space, where photo #0 and photo#1 are hanging next to each other, and each next picture reproduces the same procedure. One can see in each next photograph how the series, the collection of photographs is actually growing, as they hang side by side.

Still, this concept is most demanding, technically, as it requires each time more wall space. But it is also demanding because, for the series to grow, the project need to be shown in different but real (i.e. not staged) exhibitions. In other words, the longer the series, the more the project will have been invited by curators to different exhibitions, and the more notorious it shall be. This is something the author of the project has no control over.

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