Glancing is a Form of Contact
Patryk Staruch
Grzegorz Stefański
Ada Zielińska
at Wanda Gallery, Warsaw
27.01–24.02.2024
I figured it would be worth the trouble to stay and watch […] I think that I know how to look, if it’s something I know, and also that every looking oozes with mendacity, because it’s that which expels us furthest outside ourselves[…] In any case, if the likely inaccuracy can be seen beforehand, it becomes possible again to look; perhaps it suffices to choose between looking and the reality looked at, to strip things of all their unnecessary clothing. And surely all that is difficult besides.
– Julio Cortázar, Blow-up, 1964
● Curating
Cortázar, already in the title of his short story Blow-up, suggests the complexity of the web of gazes. Different ways of looking and images that arise from the gaze, raise questions about the objectivity of one's perception. If the gaze drifts beyond the limits of pure vision, then, at least partially, it takes over the narrative of images.
In his film Blow-up (1967), Michelangelo Antonioni uses Cortázar’s short story to undermine the essence of photography, as an objective tool for visual registration and authentication of experience. In the final scene, the protagonist, Thomas, a photographer in continuous search for a fresh perspective, comes back to the place which mistery he tired to solve with photography. However, the monochromatically green, mysterious space of Maryon Park does not reveal a thing. On the contrary, it intensifies the doubts about the nature of vision and the technical capturing of reality. Grzegorz Stefański goes even further in his exploration of both possibilities and limitations of cinematic narrative and image. In his video work blow out (2016), he consciously erases the figure of Thomas from the finale of Blow-up, putting the viewer in a state of even greater concern. And not only regarding whether or not what the photographer saw was real. Since there is no certainty about what he saw, maybe he wasn't there at all? And if he disappears, does the mystery disappear as well? Stefański's manipulation exposes and, simultaneously, undermines the power of collective memory, shaped by cinematic clichés. In his work, the artist creates a space for imagination of gazes, and raises questions about its’ nature. With this gesture of emancipating images, Stefański deceives the viewer even more than Antonioni does. He adds an alternative ending, using the stylistic figure of temps mort, so characteristic for the Antonioni, focusing the camera’s gaze into an extra-narrative space. In doing so, he affirms the aesthetic and thematic autonomy of the background, leaving the viewer to decide about what meanings it carries.
Interfering with the linearity of movie editing, Stefański breaks the scene into six shots – independent images moving in and non-chronological order. Doing so, he urges his audience to look carefully, as if he was saying: look and, you’ll (probably) see something. Depending on what you want to see.
In his paintings, Patryk Staruch touches upon the psychoanalytical background of the cinema. He uses cinematic narrative and compositional strategies, when recreating scenes from his own memories and dreams. Aware of the power of the patriarchal gaze as well as both male and female gaze shaped by the cinema, he reflects on how his female protagonists see themselves and others and, what’s the most important, how they wish to be seen? In his painting Sleepwalker (2023), the artist makes a reinterpretation of the cinematic montage. The black outline of the girl's face with her eyes closed suggests that the scene in the background – evocative of Kate Bush's music video for Wuthering heights – may be a dreamlike projection of her. But it could also be an image formed by someone else, gazing at her. Is she the one who dreams, or is the person looking at her dreaming about her?
Staruch’s paintings are like the movie frames which, though seemingly unconnected, form a narrative sequence, a proof of randomness of life itself. The large-format canvases are grounded in reality, but differ from it by their unsettling atmosphere of strangeness. It's like it was a never-made Lynch’s movie filled with the heroines of Antonioni and Godard. And as if everything was from a dream that we can't exactly recall. Perhaps this is because the artist looks at the world like a flâneur, suspended between involvement and distance. He is more of an observer rather than the lead character, leaving the stage to the continuously evolving images of his imagination, which their hypnotic and puzzling effect. For the artist, the cinema becomes a medium that brings him closer to reality.
But the cinematic perception of reality may sometimes require one to limit the distance to the object in order to actually create a contact. To get closer to what one wants to contain within an image. Ada Zielińska uses poetics of the cinema to talk about life in late capitalism and the Anthropocene. She explores the essence of film, which is to show a life itself. She photographs American wastelands and highways through a car window. The well-known cliché of road movie suit to expose the pop-cultural images of the world, stored in the collective memory, which seem to serve as a main source of knowledge. Zielińska examines what cinematic perspective can change in one’s experience of the landscape. Immersing herself in the iconosphere of Cohen brothers’ and Wim Wenders’ movies, she seems to say that life itself is like a movie. If only we look closely enough. In her project Blind Spot (2022), the artist explores the meaning of the title phenomenon, meant both as a dangerous lack of visibility of objects and life stagnation, an impasse. She uses car mirrors, but playing with their primary function, she treats them as a tool for self-observation. Zielińska replaces the original warning on their surface – ”Objects in mirror are closer than they appear” – by engraving in its place poems created in collaboration with the British poet Sam Riviere. She reminds us that every reflection, especially at times when images are so overproduced, carries the stigma of falsehood. By changing the original context of the objects, Zielińska encourages us to experience them in a different choreography, directing our gaze to the reflection of ourselves. Then, the gaze is not just a mere observation. It can establish a sensitive contact with reality and one's inner self. It encourages us to stay. And to look closely.
Movie playlist
① My life to Live, Jean-Luc Godard, 1962
② Antonioni’s trilogy: L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), L'Eclisse (1962)
③ La notte, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961
④ Cleo: from 5 to 7, Agnès Varda, 1962
⑤ Red desert, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964
⑥ Blow-up, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966
⑦ Lost highway, David Lynch, 1997
⑧ Wanda, Barbara Loden, 1970
⑨ Alice in the Cities, Wim Wenders, 1974
①⓪ Kate Bush, Wuthering Heights, official music video, 1978
①① Paris, Texas, Wim Wenders, 1984
①② Take the 5:10 to Dreamland, Bruce Conner, 1976
①③ The Doom Generation, Greg Araki, 1995
①④ No country for old man, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 2007
①⑤ American Honey, Andrea Arnold, 2016
①⑥ Roving Woman, Michał Chmielewski, 2022
①⑦ Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power, Nina Menkes, 2022
①⑧ Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen, György Pálfi, 2012