Barbara Kozłowska at Kunstverein – Artforum Worldwide
A line is a line, even when it’s drawn within the sand. The exhibition “From East to West, By means of the Globe, In direction of the Moon” launches with chosen documentation of Borderline, an epic, nine-part work by Barbara Kozłowska (1940–2008): Between 1967 and 1990, the artist drew traces internationally, designating locations the place land and water meet with small handmade sculptural types. Difficult the delicate and arbitrary bounds of political self-positioning, the motion reaches into the very coronary heart of Conceptualism by enacting a short lived gesture with everlasting penalties. On an adjoining wall, Nivegatywy fikcji (Negatives of Fiction), 1976, compiles every day drawings that chart the hours of daylight and darkness. The tabulations are damaged up by empty areas, marking the times across the demise of the artist’s father. This deeply private absence does away with the Conceptual formality that may characterize autocartography.
Focusing totally on archival supplies, this concise survey on the Kunstverein encapsulates the pioneering oeuvre of a fancy, flawed, and compelling determine within the Polish neo-avant-garde. Kozłowska’s multidimensional, microhistorical observe operated amid the confluence of Conceptual artwork and ecology in Seventies and ’80s, towards a backdrop of ethical minefields and strict authorities restrictions. The artist didn’t wish to be known as a feminist. She was anti-abortion, and anti-establishment. She by no means had kids. She was contradictory, exposing the paradoxes of the regime itself. Her work is political, radical in its plural, telescopic strategy to historical past.
