KATARZYNA JÓZEFOWICZ – Likeness of the otherness

Izabela Kopania

Home World, Paper World

Critical discussion of Katarzyna Józefowicz’s works has for years revolved around three major themes: the material that she employs, her technique, and everyday life which provides her with inspiration and presides over the rhythm of her activities. Evading this trinity seems hardly possible. The artist remains consistently faithful to the medium which she selected, to the technique which it imposes and to the reality which surrounds her and which she analyses both poetically and philosophically. Józefowicz’s works are made of paper; she uses cardboard, advertising leaflets and newspapers. Though ostensibly trivial, the three factors mentioned above in fact verify the creative process and convey an impression that the gigantic sculptures, by no means devoid of social criticism, seem to be lowering their voices to a whisper. Paper rustles when it is being scrunched up; everyday life continues to follow its own due rhythm; work requires concentration, absolute devotion, and humility.

Paper

“For more than ten years I have been creating works out of paper (…). The fragility, transience and temporary quality of this material suit me. It is not my intention for my works to last. I do not feel sad when they deteriorate. Although the ones created fifteen years ago lost their colour and purity, I would not care to clean them. I just could not be bothered about that. To me, this transience of the medium represents a value.“ Katarzyna Józefowicz’s words prove both the artist’s complete acceptance of her works’ character (in the form accorded to them, they do not stand a chance of lasting long) and her recognition of the nature of the medium that she has picked for her sculpting material. The structures built by Józefowicz seem to fully intercept the fragility and transience of paper; the ephemerality that pertains to the nature of the medium itself appears to contest the works’ monumental form. Yet these qualities have not always been so obvious to the artist herself. She discusses this realisation in one of the interviews saying that she “used to remove dust from one of the works made of white cardboard with a small brush, one element after another and [she] was terrified that construction was turning yellow.” It is tempting to assume that at least at the very beginning of Józefowicz’s artistic development this transience, immanently rooted in the nature of paper, was not a value in its own right. Quite the opposite, the artist deliberately sought to eradicate it as if she wanted to annihilate the inevitable aging process.