We cordially invite you to join us and the artist Julia Popławska to celebrate the opening of her solo show Patterns. The exhibition is hosted by the andel’s Hotel Kraków and Warimpex Finanz- und Beteiligungs AG, as a part of the project ANDEL’S PHOTO.
The curator of the exhibition Agnieszka Gniotek
Vernisage 25.06.2015 from 7pm
The exhibition will be running through June 25th to August 2nd, at the andel’s Hotel main lobby on the 1st floor
Deciphering patterns
The specific, film-like manner in which she frames motifs is the key to Julia Popławska’s exhibition Patterns. The composition of the presentation is based on contrast. Thus, the viewer, led from the particular to the general or vice versa, is being made familiar with the biological reality of the jungle. Julia Popławska is not a photographer. She’s a filmmaker who’s
used her experience in the field of moving pictures to interrupt the movement, freeze the frames that the eye would otherwise not bother to focus on. The artist has set herself a goal to prevent us from merely gliding inertly over the structures in the world of plants.
When you watch exotic landscapes on TV or directly experience them on a trip, the exuberance of vegetation is stunning. However, overwhelmed by the inexhaustible greenness, we tend to perceive it as a homogeneous whole. The jungle is beautiful, fascinating, and dangerous. That’s what makes it so captivating. But it’s also what turns it into a mere symbol of the tropics, or an archetype of ‘virgin’ nature untainted by human touch. This feeling of amazement makes us blind to the immense detail in what spreads before our eyes. How far, then, is our view from the way nature is perceived by indigenous peoples or scientists.
In Julia Popławska’s case, the plant patterns selected for the project were not accidental. The pictures were created in Centro Selva, an artist-in-residence center deep in the Amazon forest of eastern Peru that the artist visited three times in 2013 through 2014. There, she discovered not only the abundance and uniqueness of the Amazon rainforest, the richest ecosystem on Earth, but also the culture of indigenous peoples living along the Ucayali River. The Shipibo – Conibo tribe is famous for covering their faces, clothes, as well as objects of everyday use with patterns derived from nature. The Shipibo – Conibo find inspiration in the wild. Depictions of anaconda – a snake that lives in the Ucayali region – mingle with visions experienced during ritual trips on hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca. Encoded in these designs, as well as songs, are the tribe’s folk tales and legends.
The artist was inspired not so much by the decorative motifs of the Shipibo – Conibo, but the idea behind the whole process. How the patterns found in nature can seep into culture and embed themselves in the products of human work and thought, functioning as a means of conveying content. The message contained in the image composed of green fragments along with their counterpoint – the beauty of the jungle is a story about the raw diversity of apparently identical motifs, as well as the vital force of nature. Popławska photographed leaf patterns in a manner that shows their ‘veins’ and the movement of life-giving light – the process of photosynthesis.
How the rainforest is on the brink of extinction due to human activity has been so often discussed that the issue has been deprived of its meaning and just mentioning it here may seem almost hackneyed. But this is what Julia Popławska’s Patterns are to express, apart from the amazing beauty of nature. Their task is not only to encourage admiration, but also serious reflection. To be a carrier of information code, just like their tribal counterparts.
Agnieszka Gniotek
Julia Popławska
Born 1973. First and foremost a director and scriptwriter, she graduated in Journalism from the University of Warsaw and the Andrzej Wajda Film School. The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage scholarship holder. Popławska is the author of documentary films, including Dzieci Dalajlamy (‘The Children of the Dalai Lama,’ TVP 2008), Polscy Sprawiedliwi (‘The Polish Righteous,’ TVP 2008), Rozmowy Istotne (an interview with the Dalai Lama for TVP Kultura), Oj Boże, Drogi Boże (‘Oh Dear God, Dear God,’ Szkoła Wajdy), Centro. Miejsce (‘Centro. The Place,’ Studio Munka). The awards she received include the award for Best Short Documentary Film at MiradasDoc Festival, Guía de Isora, Spain and a Honorable Mention at the Documentary Film Festival NURT 2011 in Kielce, Poland. In 2012 Popławska won the Docs DF Mexico contest for a screenplay about Mexico City’s Old Town. Patterns is her first photography presentation.
