>>> MORE on Katarzyna Kozyra, Agnieszka Kalinowska, Janek Simon works

KATARZYNA KOZYRA (b. 1963, Warsaw) is probably the best known of the younger generation of Polish

artists. Her notoriety and controversial status in Poland are legendary: her works, never sensational for the sake of publicity, initially provoked extreme responses and heated public discussion. Through strategies of infiltration and exposure, Kozyra's works have consistently confronted myths, taboos, and stereotypes as they touch upon larger universal truths about human nature, private behavior, and conventional standards of beauty. Her diploma work, Pyramid of Animals, shocked the Polish art world and especially animal rights groups in 1993. Her bold questioning of the canon of woman’s body image is exemplified in her jarringly frank photo self-portraits taken during a stay in the hospital, posing as Manet’s “Olympia”. Her video installations, including two ruminations on nakedness recorded with hidden cameras, and inescapably reminiscent of Ingres and Rubens - Bathhouse (1997) and Men’s Bathhouse (1999) - have been shown widely throughout Europe. The latter, in which she enters the baths in Budapest disguised as a young man, won an Honorable Mention at the Venice Biennale when she represented Poland in 1999. It was presented in New York at the Architectures of Gender show at SculptureCenter in 2003. Her use of transgendering to undermine conventional stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, outfitting her models with the sexual attributes of "the other", began in "Rites of Spring", which premiered in 2001 at the Renaissance Society in Chicago - a revolutionary animated video in which she turned the elderly into ballet dancers through stop-motion. Kozyra has had numerous solo exhibitions of her works in major European museums – the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, Ludwig Museum in Vienna, and the Reina Sofia in Madrid, among others. In February a large-scale survey of her works opened in Galleria Civica Arte Contemporanea in Trento, Italy. One can visit her website at www.katarzynakozyra.com.pl

"Punishment and Crime", represented in Brooklyn EUphoria’s collage of European video art, first presented at Manhattan’s Postmasters in 2002, documents the actions of a group of young Polish gun enthusiasts who have taken their sport to an extreme. They indulge a primal, illicit passion by spending weekends firing vintage World War II rocket launchers, machine guns, and flamethrowers at cars, buildings, and other targets they have built for the express purpose of destroying - with no accompanying ideology, politics, or logic. The men have preserved their anonymity by agreeing to be camouflaged for the video-taping by female masks and wigs, thus helping Kozyra to disturb and confuse our conventional assumptions about gender.

In the end, it's Ms. Kozyra who gets to flaunt her talent for turning the tables on those ancient co-conspirators, voyeurs and narcissists. “They are us”, she insists.

-   Michael Rush, The New York Times, “A Renegade’s Art of the Altogether”, April 21, 2002

AGNIESZKA KALINOWSKA, born in Warsaw in 1971, is one of the most versatile, prolific, and original artists of the younger generation. She graduated in 1998 from the Painting Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan, Poland. She paints, makes inflatable objects from synthetics, and makes videos, installations, and sculptures from atypical materials (like rubber bands, confetti, paper streamers). She has already been shown widely in group shows throughout Europe, and was selected for a residency at Civitella Rainieri Center, Italy. Her one-person shows include Summer Solstice at the Manhattan Gallery, Lodz (2002), and Just a Little Bit More at the Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2002). The latter, a haunting environment of hanging streamers that suggests the aftermath of a New Year’s Eve party and only gradually reveals, in clumps of streamers on the floor, what looks like expiring party-goers, was presented in a major exhibition of Polish women artists called Architectures of Gender at the SculptureCenter in New York in 2003. “Curled into fetal positions or slouched against the wall, Kalinowska’s figures, shaped like Louise Bourgeois’s recent rag doll sculptures, might be sleeping or they might be dead, but they are undeniably beautiful in their vulnerable material and spiritual state.”  -  Megan Heuer, “Architectures of Gender: Contemporary Women’s Art in Poland”, The Brooklyn Rail, June-July 2003. In February 2004 she showed video installations under the title Personal Doping at the Arizona State University Art Museum in Tempe in her first solo exhibition in the United States. Currently, an exhibition of her work is being presented at Zacheta Gallery in Warsaw, where she lives and works. One can visit her website at http://free.art.pl/agnieszka.kalinowska

“Personal Doping” comes to Brooklyn EUrophoria direct from Arizona. Agnieszka Kalinowska writes:

“All my projects essentially consist of observing human behavior in extreme situations. I try to freeze very short moments of extreme physical and mental tension. Decisions made under such a pressure have strategic impact not only on our nearest future but also might influence our whole lives. Under pressure we expand our self-consciousness and therefore intensify the next choices we make in our lives. That’s why, during those short moments, we are able to mobilize our whole potential and let go of the energy we never dreamed we might possess.”

“I’m Here on Business” is a new work. Both of Agnieszka Kalinowska’s most recent works are represented in Brooklyn EUphoria’s collage of European video art.

JANEK SIMON was born 1977 in Krakow, Poland, where he lives and works. A graduate of the Faculty of Psychology at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University, he is continuing his education at the Faculty of Sociology. The artist works in video, programming, and computeranimation. The works include interactive installations, internet projects, and experimental computer animations. Simon also produces live video performances and music visualization under the pseudonym VjJansi. He also collaborates with ha-art magazine. His work Carpet Invaders has just been shown in the group exhibition Bang the Machine: Computer Gaming Art and Artifacts at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco (January 17– April 4, 2004), marking the young artist’s U.S. debut. The exhibition was one of the first to address the pervasive influence of our computer and video game culture on social communication and artistic production.

“Departure” // “Take-off” is a three channel video installation presenting a panoramic view of the Old Town in Krakow, the beautiful medieval and Renaissance former capital and still the traditional cultural heart of Poland, treasured by Poles as the country’s main anchor in its revered history. From time to time the bell tower of one of Krakow’s many old churches lifts off like a space shuttle and disappears into the sky. By the end of the video all the churches are gone. The work is represented in Brooklyn EUphoria’s collage of European video art.