Anna Konik

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

‘Everything that takes on the form of repetition weakens our alertness of observation. Solely recollecting – remembering something means seeing it – at that particular moment for the first time and only the recalled things are real.’(…)

Cesar Pavese

People who are the subject of my works often live in the world of memories. Exclusion from society, rejection due to the illness, old age or other symptoms of otherness in relation to the universally accepted norms creates the caste of the INVISIBLE. The subject of those last works touches the thoroughly hidden margins of our schizophrenic civilization. In my projects I decidedly go beyond the three-dimensionality of the sculpture, which I studied in the Warsaw Academy. A fourth dimension appears, which is exactly what I manage to bring out of those people. It is the mental dimension, personality, a way of surviving, emotionality – things that are inaccessible but which determine them greatly. Intimacy. Feeling. Body. Fear…

Also using my own experiences related to the therapeutic theatre, I try to search for the new kind of sensitivity, eliminating the narcissistic ego of the artist. My work does not come down to finding an interesting ‘object’, putting a camera in front of it and provoking exhibitionism. By registering confessions in my films (Transparency), behaviours (Toys), personal choices (In the Middle of the Way), I am aiming to discover what is ambiguous. I am looking for the thin borderline between the things we call ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’. My undertakings are in a sense a kind of ‘committed’ art where the psychological aspect is of great importance. As an artist I provoke in my characters the need to talk, to reflect. Thanks to this kind of work I am able to gather the enormous ‘raw’ material, initial documentation, which I can select afterwards. The word and the perfect image are the main part of my projects to date projects. Paradoxically, the artificiality of art and its ‘aesthetication’ emphasize the authenticity of the matter I am dealing with. Working within the art, I am thinking through the form and space, that is why the whole is very strictly elaborated, even though it is lined with strong emotions.