OHP (Only Hand Production), is a reactive act, here and now, not dismissing one’s own plans or dreams for “impossible” deadlines. It’s also an example of how many things we complicate and simple activities become unattainable, by crippling modern diseases, i.e. procrastination, classic psychophysical disorders, FOMO (fear of missing out), imposter syndrome, or ADT or managers’ disease. Among artistic people, the inability to perform basic technical tasks, such as nailing a frame or working with art materials, often manifests itself. My performance does not teach or instruct how to curb this growth of athetechnical people…it only shows how easy it is to do something if we just get up from our couches, move to the people and use the materials behind our backs.
Tuesday / Oct 1, 2024 / 2 pm / GAFU
—
Robert Kuśmirowski
Performer, creator of installations, objects, photographs and drawings. Born in 1973 in Łódź, in 1998–2003 he studied at the Institute of Fine Arts of the Marie Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, where he graduated with a diploma in sculpture from the studio of Prof. Sławomir Mieleszka. He spent the academic year 2002–2003 at the Metal and Modeling Studio at the University Rennes 2 and at the Musée des Beaux-arts de Rennes. He is associated with the Foksal Gallery Foundation in Warsaw, Johnen Galerie in Berlin and Guido Costa Projects gallery in Turin. He is the winner of the 2011 Prize of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage in the field of visual arts, the “Polityka” Passport for 2005 and many other awards. Since 2007, he has been working at the Intermedia Department of the Institute of Fine Arts of his alma mater and at the Sammer Academy in Salzburg (2013–2014). He lives and works in Lublin. Most of his works are based on the reconstruction or copying of old objects, documents, photographs, or rather on the creation of their delusively similar imitations. Often, they do not have a specific prototype, but only evoke the material culture of a certain time. However, their characteristic feature is utmost precision and meticulousness. In the larger installations, the artist’s passion for collecting becomes apparent – the accumulated objects make up mind-boggling collections, described by Joanna Mytkowska as “baroque of excess and entropy of detail.” That is how Kuśmirowski returns to the issues of memory, history, and nostalgia that accompany the visual culture of the distant and recent past, slowly disappearing under new layers of time. This strategy accounts for the recurring vanitas theme in his oeuvre – the reconstruction of a past material culture becomes a means of addressing the issues of transiency, vanishing, and death. His performances, sometimes accompanied by music composed by the artist, are of a similar character.
