Katarzyna Kozyra

In order to earn her diploma from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Katarzyna Kozyra presented The Pyramid of Animals (1993), a horse, dog, cat and a hen stuffed and then positioned one on top of each other in a pyramid, after having them chosen and killed for this purpose. In 1996 she exposed various nude photographs of herself, in a pose much like Manet’s Olympia, while affected with cancer and undergoing chemotherapy treatments. In Polish Catholicism, there were protests to her work Blood Ties because there was a portrait of a nude nun positioned on the symbol of the cross. Every time she shows her work it has raised scandal and polemic; however, her work continues to circulate through some of the best art museum in the world, from the Reina Sofia in Madrid to the MoMA in New York, from the Foundation Ludwig in Vienna to the Biennale in Sao Paolo. In Italy, her work was appreciated at the Venice Biennale in 1999 with the video installation, Men’s Bathhouse, in the Polish Pavilion where she received an honourable mention by the jury.

Now Katarzyna Kozyra is presented with her first solo exhibition in Italy a the Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea of Trento, which was inaugurated on February 20th and remained open to the public until May 30th, 2004. A strong and provocative artist, Katarzyna Kozyra touches on burning social themes: privacy, violence, old-age and illness. Yet, she always maintains a remarkably high poetic quality that reconnects her research on contemporary social conditions to selected elements from art history. Her finest artistic productions to date will be on exhibit, predominantly her video installations and photographs. Other than the photographic series, Blood Ties (1995) and Olympia (1996), presented was the video installation Women’s Bathhouse, from 1997, which is a collection of images “stolen” from a female bathhouse, in which the plump bodies of the bathers, enveloped in steam, is reminiscent of the atmosphere often found in paintings by Ingres and Delacroix. On the other hand, in Men’s Bathhouse (1999), the artist disguised herself as a naked man complete with a false penis and fake body hair, in order to access the “male sanctuary” of a Budapest bathhouse. Incognito, she used hidden cameras to spy on the men, illustrating the moment they find themselves immersed in full freedom. Also exhibited was the complex video installation The Rite of Spring (1999-2002), in which the dancers are all elderly men and woman, all over the age of eighty, almost paralyzed, they are able to dance through a system of cinemagraphic animation: distended on a white stage, nude and vested in inverted sexes - fake penises on the women and fake vulvas on the men – represent the dance of Le Sacre du Printemps by Stravinsky and the choreography of Nijinshky, which was presented in Paris in 1913 and seen as a scandal. It is an ironic and almost grotesque work, that manages to bring to light the problems of the elderly, as well as the diversity of rhythm.

Dance and rhythm are themes that the artist has been particularly involved with in the last few years. Featured alongside The Rite of Spring is the video installation Lords of the Dance, in which the protagonists perform acrobatics with gold painted bodies and bearing helmets.

In addition, during the course of the exhibition, at the beginning of March, the artist created a site specific work for the city of Trento, an unpublished performance entitled, “Nightmare”, that she performed for the public. For the occasion a catalogue in Italian and English was dedicated to the artist, curated by Fabio Cavallucci and Hanna Wróblewska, which also contains texts written by curator Massimiliano Gioni, an interview with Katarzyna Kozyra by Artur Zmijewski and numerous images of her work. Supporting this initiative, as well as other existing programs at the Galleria Civica is the Grand Hotel Trento of the chain, Boscolo Hotels.

Pressetext

Katarzyna Kozyra
Kuratoren: Fabio Cavallucci, Hanna Wroblewska