Multiplying Doubts

Twelve luminous sepia photographs of circular forms, each of them having a dark central area that draws the viewer’s attention, acquire a new significance when viewed in the context of another cycle, which the artist had entitled in the same way: Multiplying Doubts. In the case of the latter cycle, which consists of nine black-and-white photographs (or, more precisely, their negatives), the viewer easily recognises what they show, namely clay pots for household plants. Both cycles were shown at Małgorzata Niedzielko’s individual exhibition at Galeria Arsenał in Białystok in 2013. Although the inescapable impression may be that their juxtaposition removes all the possible reservations, it removes them only seemingly.

The light-coloured interiors of pots, filtrated through the optics of a photographic camera, create a collection of abstract ovoid forms which bring to mind some vague organic matter; they can be associated with a cell, the moon, an eddy, a navel, an orbit, planetary rings or a spreading stain. The level of realism in particular shots differs and the chances of identifying the presented object vary as a result. Matter, especially the alchemical materia prima derived from the depths of nature, has always been exceedingly important in Niedzielko’s oeuvre. She repeatedly used metal, wood, including wood turned into charcoal, water, soil or seeds, watching their life processes, their transformations and their disintegration. Niedzielko returns to this matter in Multiplying Doubts, observing its form and its amorphousness. She manages to notice how the essence of matter escapes the attempts to lock it in a definite shape.

A clay pot serves to impart form, to hold the spilling soil and to trammel the growing roots of the plant. With time, the roots come to reflect the shape of the vessel by filling it densely. Yet a pot itself constitutes this prime matter as well, since it is, essentially, clay mixed with water, turned on the wheel and fired in a kiln. Niedzielko’s sepia photographs eloquently show that this matter not necessarily wishes to retain the form that was enforced on it. It accepts water stains, it allows the roots to score delicate lines on it, it flakes and breaks off. When observed through the eye of the camera, it reveals its ambiguous nature, inevitably causing us to doubt whether it truly is what it ordinarily appears to be.

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translated from Polish by Klaudyna Michałowicz