Given its typically secondary role, it's rare for narrative to
make such a radical difference to how we read a piece of art. Narrative is a
form of secondary payoff which means we don't pause to look at a mere pretty
landscape. Beauty carries a price and in the case of the narratives of Ula
Wiznerowicz, it is a very high price. Is it significant that the pictures were
taken in Poland? They could have been taken anywhere, and therein lies their
communicative power. The destructive power of addiction knows no limits and is
immune to the wealth of nations.
There is a curtain and a world behind the curtain. The title
Behind the Curtain brutally transports
the viewer from an aesthetic experience to an existential one. It suggests that
the images carry a double meaning. We are confronted with the first circle of
(Dante's?) hell. Beautiful landscapes introduce a visual dissonance. Cruel
nature, indifferent to human fate and the losing battle fought by the subjects
(often absent from the images) against their own weakness. Nature doesn't judge
or assess value. Intruding into this record of the external world we find still
life images taken indoors - spaces seen through the eyes of an artist. These
compositions, while made up of modest everyday objects, can be beautiful too. These
modest items are bare living essentials. No one has arranged them or shifted
them around. Their owners won't throw them away. They are placed where they are
needed.
The lens records the fading colours, a well-used gas stove, a
cat looking for a comfortable spot amidst clouds of cigarette smoke, perhaps
some leftover food. Occasionally people make their presence felt in the images,
people who are powerless in the grips of addiction. There are also the
landscapes which they do not see. And there are the women who never lose hope.
Grzegorz Malkiewicz
"If this is an exhibition about alcoholism then I'm the
queen of Sheba." So began an exchange I overheard between two
newly-acquainted photographers on the steps of London's Polish Cultural Centre
(POSK). "Go and look for yourself, I challenge you to find anything in
there on the subject."
The photos presented by Ula Wiznerowicz on 25 November at
the POSK Gallery showed no bottles, vomit-strewn carpets or the iconic elderly
alcoholic struggling to mount a bicycle in the mud of a country lane. There was
also an absence of images of enlarged livers, faces full of swollen teeth or
photocopies of invoices for nights spent in the state drunk-tank.
I don't think, however, that such images are really worth
looking at. And anyway, such artistic motifs are already being used by the UK
Department of Health as health warnings on cigarette packets. All the paper
used to convince us of the terrible effects of drinking alcohol could no doubt
be used to wrap up the whole planet. It doesn't look like those publications
have ever successfully helped anyone to kick the habit.
Is it compulsory for an exhibition to shock? At least once a
week I'm shocked by the excesses of my drunken neighbours outside my window.
It's no secret that my chosen form of stress relief is to sip a dark ale
wittily entitled 'Bishop's Finger'.
The images presented by Ula Wiznerowicz are, instead, a
window onto a distant world, nearly forgotten by the majority of emigrants. It
is a cruel world, an empty void in which the only cure for our painful grey of
existence is alcohol, a wretched world devoid of content. The artist has made
this world more palatable with a subtle palette of colours which sometimes make
it hard to tell if we're looking at a photograph or a painting.
I must admit I was surprised by the maturity of these images
which seems at odds with the young age of the artist. I don't how old Jacek
Kaczmarski was when he wrote the song Encore
One More Time, but I was reminded of its words when I considered the
subject of the exhibition. Somehow
these two modes of expression seemed to chime together. They revealed an image
of reality seen through the eyes of a man who lived life under the pressure of
terrifying loneliness. In between alcoholic trances he saw himself standing on
the precipice of his unfulfilled dreams. Perhaps it was only when I connected
the words of the song with the images that I was able to see clearly. I don't
know if Ula Wiznerowicz also had so clear a vision of what she wanted to
express or whether she only intuited the existence of a certain state of
consciousness, a state that seems very distant from the young, pretty and
ambitious Londoner.
Michal Sedzikowski
