Małgorzata Szandała
A Rehearsal of a Medicine Man

Małgorzata Szandala‘s exhibition “A Rehearsal of a Medicine Man” in the G99 Gallery follows her residency within the Brno Artists in Residence programme in the Brno House of the Arts in 2018. Her art is typified by work with space of a place and its history, including links with other places arising from the use of space by people. The artist’s work is frequently rooted in her personal experience with places that she has visited, as well as with the stories associated with them. The contrast between the seeming objectivity of documented history and the subjectivity of a person’s destiny connected with a particular place is often a key moment of her compositions. They require personal involvement and mental participation of others, and the artist enhances it by the consistent abandoning of her artistic stylization. The final work, be it a temporary installation or a more permanent intervention, is a compilation of carefully selected elements functioning as ready-mades. The exposure of a random or target audience to this kind of realization is impossible without the inclusion of the memories and experience of each viewer. This strategy comes close to the style of work employed by visual performers rather than artists working with space, and it is also used with the “Rehearsal of a Medicine Man” exhibition created for the G99 Gallery.

Małgorzata Szandała (1977) is a Polish conceptual artist living in Gliwice, near Katowice where she currently works as an assistant professor at the Academy of Fine Arts. She studied in the graphic art studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and at the University of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Warsaw. An important part of her art practice is research through art. She studies the cognitive role of art, explores the principles and different forms of narration, and is interested in the borders between documentaries, factual records of reality and fiction, or the reflections of reality through subjective experience. The outcomes are typically site-specific installations and objects, and the artist often employs subversive or challenging strategies.

malgorzata-szandala.art.pl

Photo: Polina Davydenko