Iza Tarasewicz – Nugget

IZA TARASEWICZ

Is active in the field of sculpture, drawing, and performance. The originality of her activities rests to a large extent on the uniqueness of the matter the artist uses and the subjects she raises. Quite often content and form are here inextricably intertwined.
In her successive projects Iza Tarasewicz creates a world constructed predominantly of organic matter (animal skin, guts, fur, fruit). Her major projects in this spirit are the Dirty Bomb, or a gigantic female figure made of animal fat, a wolf made of hogskin exposed to the wear and tear of time, or teddy-bears made of fur.
In the works that make up the “Brawn” exhibition, (Galeria Arsenał, Białystok 2008) Iza reveals both our inherent entanglement in matter and, figuratively, the “intestinal” character of human existence, which is obsessively self-analysing. Apart from the Dirty Bomb, the artist included in the exhibition a sign of infinity twisted out of prepared hog intestines and “wounds” inserted in one box; the wounds are made of hog bladders that resemble seashells, flowers, or vaginas.
Her characteristic mode of expression was abandoned by the artist in the series Children and Animals. The suite consists of pairs of children and animals. Each time the participants of this relation are very close to each other, embracing or retaining eye contact. This time the sculptures are snow-white, smooth, made of salt mass, but in all cases there is a red mark on the white surface. Pairs composed in this way bring out the affinity of children and animals, their unique and primordial manner of existence that combines in a coherent whole cruelty, fun, and innocence. The seeming difference between this work and the previous ones is in fact a perfect supplementation to or a transcendence of the earlier oeuvre.
In her art Tarasewicz invokes her childhood experiences, her growing up in a village near Białystok, where contact with nature was based on primordial directness, with no need to hide what is unsightly/unaesthetic. Thanks to this first-hand experience Iza’s projects are not pretentious and she herself is always a person “from out there”, who thanks to the lengthening of perspective has acquired a certain distance and thanks to education has been given tools to re-name “that” world.

Zuzanna Hadryś/ Galeria Stereo

http://www.transmisja.eu/NEP/NEP_TARASEWICZ.htm