Robert Kuśmirowski has a fascinating ability to construct, literally, any object from any material. To most artists, such a gift for imitation would amount to a trap. Because it is not an easy thing to renounce an ability to surprise and enchant.
A freight car made of polystyrene foam in 1:1 scale and a part of the train station; the watchman’s lodge with an unfinished mug of coffee and a placard saying „back soon”, which freezes the customers in the reflexive action of patiently waiting for the putative watchman’s imminent return, affect everyone – a casual viewer as much as a critic, a connoisseur or an enthusiast of art. In fact, it would be entirely acceptable for the artist to stop at this stage of enchanting and impressing the audience with his unusual dexterity – and many of us would probably consider that quite enough. Luckily, Robert Kuśmirowski does not consider this enough, and certainly does not see it as an aim in itself. His art invariably refers to something.
Kuśmirowski’s works are located in the sphere of the anthropology of objects. He is interested in material culture as a product of human expansion and expression, a vehicle for memory and history, and a testimony to entropy, transience and finally death. He is a creator, a researcher, a conservator, a craftsman and a collector in one. He collects tales; he focuses on objects; he observes the processes of eroding, aging and dying; he combines found and adapted objects with their copies and imitations which he makes himself.
Graduation Tower– which is one of Kuśmirowski’s largest works when it comes to size – is a structure referring to the processes of concentrating, reducing and condensing on the one hand, and to the practices of improving the human condition and assisting recovery or convalescence on the other. At the same time, it is an assemblage, a collection of objects salvaged from storage, sorted out and exhibited in a new context. Until now, Graduation Tower was exhibited in an open space, where it was not protected against weather and was being slowly destroyed by rain and temperature changes. Now, in Galeria Arsenał in Białystok, it is exhibited indoors for the first time. The effect brings to mind the “cube in a cube” structure, since it changes the perception of Graduation Tower’s scale; itself filled with objects, the tower tightly fills the building of the power plant into which it is crammed.
Monika Szewczyk
Graduation towers, occasionally referred to as a thorn houses, are wooden structures covered with bundles of blackthorn branches, which originally served to increase the concentration of salt in a saline solution in the process of producing medicinal and edible salt. The first graduation towers were constructed as early as the 17th century. Afterwards, it was noticed that air around these towers is saturated with a saline aerosol as a result of its natural evaporation while dripping down the tower structure. Inhaling this mineral-rich air began to be recommended as part of various therapies. The history of the use of graduation towers in healing practices goes back to the 19th century. One of the earliest and largest graduation towers in Europe were constructed in Ciechocinek, Poland, designed by Jakub Graff, a professor of the Mining Academy in Kielce. They are not only still extant, but fully operational. They are 15.8m high and, in total, 1741.5m long. The target of the concentration process is to acquire a minimum 16% (and maximum c. 27%) solution of NaCl in water. The course of this process is heavily dependent on weather. Evaporation is the most intense, and thus the most effective, on sunny and windy days, while on misty and rainy days the process virtually stops.
Graduation towers have long been used in the therapy and preventive treatment of various respiratory ailments, sinusitis, chronic obstructive lung disease, arterial hypertension, vegetative neuroses and general exhaustion. In healthy individuals, saline inhalations increase resistance to diseases. The room containing a graduation structure is filled with an aerosol rich in valuable minerals, such as iodine, bromide, calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron and sodium. This aerosol has a negative electric charge, which is anti-bacterial. The medicinally most effective saline is the 3% to 5% solution. In addition, graduation towers act as a gigantic air filter. In 1996, the silt and salt from the Ciechocinek graduation towers were found to contains cesium isotopes (Cs-134 and Cs-137) originating from the Chernobyl power plant disaster (1986), but their concentration was well below the harmful level.
based on pl.wikipedia.org
The Graduation Tower of Art is a structure constructed of conifer timber, a system of diverse couplings and wooden supports; above all, it is a triumph of an accumulation of post-exhibition objects and structures which I have amassed over the last dozen years. They were arranged and ordered according to their sizes, functions and colours, and supplemented with an inventory record typical of museum collections. The structure meant to concentrate arthas been designed with our visual acuity in mind, and it subjects our visual perceptions to a trial intended to check their sensitivity to changes occurring in a specific object. This work focuses on, and consciously engages with, the environment. The exhibited objects, which are close to my own morphology,also undergo a certain transformation: they pass from the storage condition to the exhibition level, lifting the eye and obliterating nostalgia (through the feeling of my destroying these works and imparting some closure on them). This assemblage of artifacts I no longer need makes it possible to record them, to arrange them with a view to an aesthetic purpose, and to conduct their fetishistic investigation. Just like in the case of graduation towers, conditions of the environment considerably influence the final shape of the Graduation Tower. Colour changes on surfaces subject to corrosion and gravitation stains on the timber structures and other pieces combine into a single, indivisible organism. This is an inhalation of art; art brought out from storage. An initial observation/inhalation of a single collection of the Graduation Tower leads only to singling out its elements; later, it begins to involve relationships between the elements, for instance their mutual arrangement, proportions, spatial relation or colour scheme. Only this makes it possible to faithfully recreate the examined whole, thereby ensuring the correct course of concentrating art.
Robert Kuśmirowski
translated from Polish by Klaudyna Michałowicz
Please join us to meet the artist and tour his exhibition on 14 March (Saturday) at 11.00 in the power station.
Robert Kuśmirowski was born in 1973 in Łódź. He graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts at the Faculty of Arts of Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS) in Lublin, at the atelier of Prof. Sławomir Mieleszko, in 2003. In the years 2002–2003 he received a scholarship at the Atelier of Metal and Modelling at Rennes 2 University (Beaux-Arts Rennes) in France. He is a sculptor and creator of installations and objects; his other interests include draughtsmanship, photography and music. He focuses mainly on the topics of material culture, time and transience. His works often constitute meticulously made imitations of old things, objects and even entire interiors. He was voted Artist of the Year 2003 in the ranking of the online periodical Raster. Laureate of the Polityka Passport for the year 2005. Currently he cooperates with the Foksal Gallery Foundation in Warsaw, Johnen Galerie in Berlin, Guido Costa Projects in Turin and Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York. He lives and works in Lublin.
Curator:
Monika SzewczykRobert Kuśmirowski
