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restraint (2016), installation view, Wola Museum, Warsaw, 19.01-14.02.2016

restraint, 2016

three-channel installation, 0’16”, 0’17”, 0’16”, HD,
black and white, no sound, aspect ratio 16:9, loop, ed. 3+2AP
(screening version: one-channel video, 0’46”, loop)
100x80cm, digital print on baryta paper, framed, ed. 5+2AP

with participation of Radosław 44 and GRF Bemowo historical reconstruction groups

In 2017 awarded Ivan Juritz Prize in London and Grand Prix at the Young Art Biennale in Poland.

During my research, I came across a photograph from Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel’s "Evidence" project. The first time I saw the picture, I stopped in my tracks. I knew that I was looking at a journalistic photograph, probably from the early 1960s, factual evidence of two policemen violence towards a young male. Yet I could not rid myself of the impression that it was also somehow intimate, even erotic. It was also the time when the extreme right-wing party won parliamentary elections in Poland and historical narrations have become to be reinforced by staged reconstructions of Second World War events. I decided to reconstruct the photograph I have found to critically ask about how the language of the documentary is recreated.

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restraint (2016), installation view, Studio Gallery, Warsaw, 05.2016

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restraint (2016), installation view, l’étrangère gallery, London, 11.2017-01.2018, photo Andy Keate

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