aneta grzeszykowska & jan smaga

Born in 1974, graduated from the Graphic Art Department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Live and work in Warsaw.


selected solo exhibitions:

2004
- Plan, Raster, Warsaw, PL
- Plan, Fons Welters Gallery, Amsterdam, NL

1999
- India, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, PL
- Ice installation, Kuchnia Gallery, Warsaw, PL


selected group exhibitions:

2004
- Palimpsest Museum, Biennial of Polish Art, Lodz, PL
- Paravent, factory - Kunsthalle Krems, A
- From Above, Georg Kargl Galerie, Vienna, A
- Zasiedzenie, Arsenal Gallery, Poznan, PL
- Pluzzle, galerie griedervonputtkamer, Berlin, D

2003
- The embodyed corset, St Johann, A

2002
-18th Poster Biennial, The Poster Museum, Warsaw, PL
- Blow up, Palace of Culture, Warsaw, PL
- Festival of Black and White Photography, Zakopane, PL


  
Detail from Żytnia 79/2 (from the series "Plan"), 110 cm X 96 cm, lambda print, edition of 7.
 
"Plan" by Aneta Grzeszykowska and Jan Smaga, consists of 10 photographic compositions which are an extremely detailed representations of 10 private apartments. All of them were photographed as if the ceilings were taken off. Such an unusual effect was achieved through the use of a special technique: the overall picture of a room is an aggregate of dozens fragmentary photographs taken from above, and then merged using a computer. This gives the impression as if a scanner moved over the apartments - there are neither deformations nor blurred fragments, the precision of the image is dazzling and the possibility to enlarge it is practically unlimited. Due to its laborious nature, the project took 2 years to complete.
"Plan" is an attempt to see everything at once in someone's apartment, without selecting or evaluating, an absolute X-ray of privacy. It is a gaze of the Big Brother, who peeps into homes like playhouses, excited with the fact how all the toys are precisely made. At the same time, it is a perfect sociological documentation of how an individual organizes his or her own immediate environment.

Every composition - apartment - comprises several separate parts, which correspond to the layout of walls dividing the space into individual rooms. The mosaic-like structure tempts to manipulate it - to switch the individual pictures, and this characterizes one of the fundamental features of architecture, that is, an arbitrary way of organizing the living space. Squares, rectangles and other geometrical shapes managed to subjugate human individualism and simplified our social life in an amazingly easy and simple way. We don't even consider what (who) is behind (our) wall. Those pictures make us realize that the life of a community can be easily described using geometrical figures - square bathrooms and kitchens (with the appropriate amount of human figures in every small compartment).

"Plan" however, is not so ruthless. It is also a simple story about life, which consists of an infinite amount of elements and details, as well as the sheer pleasure of perceiving them.
 

Aneta Grzeszykowska & Jan Smaga, Krasińskiego 10/154 (from the series "Plan"), 152 cm x135 cm, lambda print, edition of 7.
 

Aneta Grzeszykowska & Jan Smaga, "Plan" - exposition view in Raster VI 2004
   

Aneta Grzeszykowska & Jan Smaga, On the grass, 2003, series of 6 photographs (6x 40x50 cm), lambda print, edition of 7.
     
aneta grzeszykowska & jan smaga
© łukasz gorczyca & michał kaczynski, raster gallery 2004