Izabella Gustowska
Gustowska was born in Poznań, where she lives and
works. She is a Professor at the University of Arts in
Poznań, Faculty of Multimedia Communications, Department of Intermedia, where
heads the Multimedia Activity Studio. Also, she supervises Collegium Da Vinci’s
Studio of Drawing for students majoring in Graphic Arts. Her works span a vast range of media, including painterly
objects, graphic techniques, photography, video installations, video
performance, and film. According to the artist, the following solo
exhibitions proved ground-breaking for her further explorations:
– her first video performance, Multiple Portrait, Akumulatory Gallery, Poznań 1985;
– twin-themed works: Relative Similarities, The National Museum, Wrocław 1986;
– painterly objects fused with cinematic narrative at
the exhibition entitled Floating, Contemporary
Art Gallery Zachęta, Warsaw 1996;
– reflections on L’Amour
Passion in hetero- and homosexual relationships conveyed in Passions and Other Cases, Center for
Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw 2001;
– the sound experiment in the thirteen spaces of the
exhibition Singing Chambers, District
Museum, Bydgoszcz 2001;
– the retrospective show Life is a Story, including media installation entitled The Art of Choice, The National Museum,
Poznań 2007.
Her artistic adventures of a lifetime would include:
–SHE. Media
Story, a piece for thirteen spaces, shown at the 2008 Malta Theatre
Festival in Poznań, and working on The
Case of Josephine H..., the film made in New York thanks to the fellowship
awarded by the Kościuszko Foundation. The 50-minute-long picture was screened e.g. at the International
Film Festival T-Mobile Era Nowe Horyzonty in Wrocław (2014), and at the 11th
Annual Big Apple Film Festival in New York, New Voices, Ancient Echoes: Polish
Women in Film in New York, at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and other
Polish galleries.
If she were to name an intriguing period in her life, it would be the time spent writing Hybryda, the book published by the 9/11 Art Space Foundation in 2014.
The longest and the most absorbing was the project which began in 2008 and ended in 2015, when it was crowned with the following solo exhibitions:
– Izabella Gustowska, The Case of Edward H…, The
Case of Iza G…, Arsenał Gallery Power Station, Białystok (curator: Monika
Szewczyk);
– Izabella Gustowska, New York and the Girl,
featuring Aneta Grzeszykowska,
Ada Karczmarczyk, Eva Rubinstein, Art Stations Gallery, Poznań (curator: Agata
Jakubowska)
with its ultimate outcome: the publication entitled Izabella Gustowska. Nowy Jork i dziewczyna
which came out with Czas Kultury.
She is happy that her works may be found in notable museums in the country and abroad, for instance at the National Museum in Wrocław, MoMA in New York (graphic works), or in the private collection of Grażyna Kulczyk, which focuses on the art from Central-Eastern Europe, at the Muzeum Susch in Switzerland (objects created in the 1990s), as well as at homes of her friends.
One thing she finds important is travelling near and
far, which is when she gathers the photographic and cinematic stimuli. She
likes to become engrossed in reading, in conversations, and in sounds.
photo by Sławomir Sobczak
ANTONINA \ (kwiecień-grudzień)
In the course of three months of her residency at CK
ZAMEK, Izabella Gustowska will be collecting photographic material and footage
for ANTONINA, an exhibition planned to take place in 2020.
This is going to be hybrid show, an alloy of media, combining projections,
objects, the presence of performers and narrative elements. It will be “built” within the interiors of CK
Zamek: in the exhibition halls, hallways, selected rooms, the ladies’ room, in
the lift and other locations found during the 2018 residency. The artist’s
intention is to become immersed in the everyday life of the place, be a voyeur
of sorts, witnessing authentic situations and observing people, only to
confront them with arranged film sets. The footage, including archival material
gathered during the residency, will be used in the prospective film entitled On the Bridge of Avignon, and in the
aforesaid exhibition (incidentally, Antonina
is its working title). The “return” of the footage to the locations where
it was shot is one of the interesting devices that the artist is going to
employ, thus producing a singular tautology, juxtaposing filmed narrative with
reality.
However, although the cadence of things happening within the spaces of the
exhibition will be that of a lethargic dream, the film will palpably pick up
the pace. As a result we will be exposed
to a peculiar déjà
vu and, perhaps, start asking question about the truth
and illusion of the moving pictures, about the touch, scent, traces and
presence of people in the real spaces of CK ZAMEK.
