Accompanying exhibition: Bogusław Bachorczyk, Ladies and Hussars | Razura (next-door to Jednostka)
Exhibition openings: 10.05.2024 (Friday), 7–9PM
Exhibitions: 11.05–08.06.2024
Place: Jednostka Gallery, Andersa 13, 00-159 Warsaw
Jednostka opening hours: Wednesday–Saturday 2PM–6PM
Razura opening hours: Monday–Friday 9AM–6PM and by appointment
11.05.2024 (Saturday), 5:30–6:30PM: Artist guided tour through the exhibitions at Jednostka and Razura
Muranowska Majówka 2024: 09–12.05.2024, 12–7PM
It all starts when you don’t want it any longer. Can it be put in order? What I kept running away from has turned out to be important. Us and them, or maybe the divide runs elsewhere?
An unstately history, an unstately identity. Deep intuition annihilates thoughts. Things keep changing their places, new neighbourhoods and combinations, a half, a quarter, one third, upside down, above, next to, in the reflection, the glittering. Leeches from the cliff, people had to leave, emotional blackmail, shame for the family, for fathers, a superior unearthly hierarchy, in the name of something, for someone, more important? And me not knowing what is new anymore, new things keep coming up. A generation of rock and punk music, raised on good, powerful lyrics. You don’t choose your family, you have no control over this, we run away, we come back, the family gets you, it comes in waves like that. We free ourselves from bonds, create new bonds, necessary for us, for our identity, for a myth, we consolidate the foundation, do we want to be who we are?
Beauty of the world. Scythes, horses, hard work, harvest, dust. Silence, background, resistance of the mouth, strawberry thieves, you need to know where the secret is, listening, vulnerability, existence, give me your hand, moulding, forming, duties, crowd, parade, stencils, cutouts, dog tags, heroic.
The Wish You Were Here exhibition spans several decades of Bogusław Bachorczyk’s artistic creation. The earliest works on display date to the 1990s. Being deeply rooted in the artist’s biography, they also mirror the political and social realities of the transformation period in Poland, capturing the elusive atmosphere of the time. The artist intensely experiences the process of him as a boy maturing into the role of the man his family, society and authorities would like him to be. He struggles through canons and clichés, visits the pantheon of heroes, constantly fighting for himself. His weapon is art. He chooses from a breadth of techniques and media – collage, object, installation, painting, archival materials, and plays with aesthetics, looking for the most accurate means of capturing the meaning. He does this with extraordinary ease. He keeps changing the mood of his commentary, he doesn’t castrate himself of emotions.
And although the situation of LGBTQ+ people has improved since the 1990s, a time that Bachorczyk recalls with bitterness, their rights are still being exploited by politicians. However, the artist is not in the habit of complaining. Just the opposite. By exploring bitter and difficult experiences, he finds strength and cheerfulness within himself. As Bachorczyk himself explains, his art speaks about ‘the joy of living in Poland’.
Curator: Katarzyna Sagatowska
Partner: Razura, Artesola Gallery
Bogusław Bachorczyk – visual artist, curator, professor of painting at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, where he has led the 3rd Interdisciplinary Studio since 2018. In his work, the artist mixes various media, such as painting, sculpture and photography, employing bricolage and combining craft techniques with modern media. He presents some of his works as installations involving elements of performance.
Bachorczyk explores the topics of history, time, identity, memory and individual discovery of the private past. His art also addresses contemporary definitions of masculinity, male corporeality and sexuality, as well as homosexual love. In his creative efforts, Bachorczyk eagerly draws on the legacy of writers, visual artists, and performers such as Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, W.G. Sebald, Wojciech Jerzy Has, Aleksander Rodczenko, Wacław Niżyński, and Władysław Hasior.
He has created a breadth of artistic concepts and projects, including the Sketchbook Diary, which he started to keep in 1986. Since 2003, he has turned his artistic studio at 17 Czysta Street in Kraków into a constantly transformed space of creative exploration.
Bogusław Bachorczyk invites artists representing other disciplines, including actors, dancers and poets, to take part in collaborative projects. One such endeavour is Our Little Garden, which the artist has initiated at 15 Czysta Street in Kraków, where he rents a studio. Over the years, Bachorczyk has invited a number of Polish artists to add to the collection of artworks in the garden and keeps expanding it.
Bogusław Bachorczyk, All Is Good, 2007–2008
Bogusław Bachorczyk, Parade, 2009
Bogusław Bachorczyk, from the Ladies and Hussars cycle, 2009