Krzysztof Zieliński
Krzysztof Zieliński Briesen
The newest of Zieliński s projects entitled Briesen is at the same time his oldest. The first photos were taken in 1995, but the idea to use the dispersed material as a whole came much later in 2007. Although the title of the project is Briesen the German name for Wąbrzeźno, where the artist grew up and his first well-known series Hometown originated in the photographs we see views of Berlin, the city to which the artist would later relocate permanently. Zieliński also makes a symbolic move to the new city by adding a local, small-town filter to the image of Berlin. The metropolis housing many millions, with the help of photography, becomes familiar territory and gradually emerges as the Neue Heimat, or the new Hometown for Zieliński. In the iconography of Berlin there is a certain novelty in seeing this unusually fashionable city as a paradoxical, provincial, and underdeveloped metropolis, an out-dated polis that in no way takes the breath away. If Krzysztof Zieliński is an emblematic photographer of the small fatherland, then at the same time he has something of an uprooted nomad inside him albeit one who has chosen as his living and working environs probably the most stripped of identity capital, of the larger European cities. The Berlin seen by Zieliński is a strange mixture of West and East. In photographing this city, the artist enters a dialogue not only with native Polish photography, but equally with German Heimatfotografie and the German tradition of city views (particularly attractive are those stylistic echoes in Zieliński s work that can be traced back to the Düsseldorf School). At first glance Briesen is also seemingly a degradation of the photographic document; there is no typology here, no mass-production, no firm order. On the contrary, Zieliński further breaks down what for him has, until now, been a rigorous approach to reality. The accidental starts to control the series an impressionable subject and one that can be personally experienced in Berlin s spaces. That which was fundamental to Zieliński s earlier series the identity of a place defined by topographic document becomes marginalized. Zieliński s Berlin is unspecific. This is no-place. The identity of the artist, and not of the place, definitely plays the dominant role here. Looking at photos taken by Zieliński over the last fifteen years, the near-documentary work of Jeff Wall comes to mind. On reflection however, the term post-documentary is perhaps a better description for the manner in which Zieliński postures and uses photography. He juggles conventions, mixing them albeit without conviction and he does so with ease. Post-documentary Briesen is first and foremost about emotions, impressions and fragments. Berlin looks like the familial Wąbrzeźno a provincial, non-monumental non- Berlin. If Briesen is a kind of post-document, the formular for which Zieliński came to after years of toil, then this is a story of development, of definitions and their transgression, of piercing stares, all of which make the need for the control of format or colour in the photos redundant, instead they test the power of completely different stories. Adam Mazur
Krzysztof Zieliński Born 1974 in Wąbrzeźno, Poland. Lives and works in Wabrzęźno and Berlin. Solo exhibitions (selection) 2010 Briesen, Project Kordegarda, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, PL Palace, Zamek Culture Center, Poznan, PL 2009 Briesen, Gallery Starmach, Cracow, PL 2008 Millennium School, Center of Contemporary Art, Torun, PL Millennium School, Galerie Magazin, Berlin, D 2005 Random Pleasure, Galeria Zderzak, Cracow, PL Hometown, Institutto Polacco, Rome, I 2004 Hometown, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, PL 2002 Planespoting, Gallery Zderzak, Cracow, PL 2001 Hometown, Gallery Zderzak, Cracow, PL 2000 Planespoting, Linhart Foundation, Prague, CZ 1999 Cathedral, Galerie Velryba, Prague, CZ Group exhibitions (selection) 2010 Erdore, Märkisches Museum, Witten, D The Past is a Foreign Country, Center of Contemporary Art, Torun, PL 2009 Wir Berliner!, Stadtmuseum Berlin, D 2007 Reality Crossing, 2. Fotofestival Mannheim, D Images of Representation,Goethe Institut, Munich, D European Parliament, Brussels/ Strasbourg/ Munich 2006 Ideal City Invisible Cities, Zamosc, PL; Potsdam, D The New Documentalists, The Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, PL 2005 Marginal Architecture, Hranice, CZ El Diablo no es tan feo como se pinta, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, AR 2004 26th São Paulo Bienal Pavilhao Ciccillo Matarazzo, Sao Paulo, BR Nova Polska 70 80, Maison folie de Moulins, Lille, F Tirol Transfer, Austrian Cultural Forum, Warsaw, PL 2003 Prague Biennale, 1 Narodni Galerie Veletrzni Palace, Prague, CZ Biennale Fotografii 3, Arsenal Municipal Gallery, Poznan, PL Aloha to Polish Art, Simon Says Gallery, Stockholm Art Fair, S The View From Here: Recent Pictures from Central Europe and the American Midwest, SPACES Gallery Cleveland, Ohio, USA; Ohio Arts Council s Riffe Gallery Columbus, Ohio, USA; Mestska Galerie - House at the Stone Bell, Prague, CZ 2002 The View From Here: Recent Pictures from Central Europe and the American Midwest, Ludwig Museum, Budapest, H 2000 Photography from FAMU, Month of Photography, Bratislava; SK 1998 Quo Vadis Europa?, Schloss Kromsdorf, Weimar, D All images from the series Briesen, 2007-09 c-print, 50x70 and 70x100 cm edition 3 +1 AP Lindenstr. 35, 10969 Berlin +49 30 61107375 www.zak-branicka.com mail@zak-branicka.com