Aleksandra Polisiewicz
16 Jan - 01 Feb 2009
ALEKSANDRA POLISIEWICZ
“Wartopia”
16th January – 1st February 2009
2009 marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War and the German invasion of Poland and in remembrance, Künstlerhaus Bethanien is showing the project Wartopia by the Polish artist Aleksandra Polisiewicz (curator: Bozena Czubak).
Aleksandra Polisiewicz was born in Katowice, Poland, in 1974 and lives and works in Warsaw.
In Wartopia the artist essays a virtual recreation of the city of Warsaw according to unrealised National Socialist plans dating from the first years of the Second World War. In architectonic urban panoramas displayed as coloured prints, animations and design models, her visual reproductions reveal an equivocal view of history.
Aleksandra Polisieweicz carried out extensive research for the project Wartopia and made it the foundation to her virtual reconstruction of an uncompleted and still largely unknown chapter of recent history. The starting point for the urban visions of Wartopia, which were generated using 3D- technology, was the National Socialists’ urban developmental concepts: they proposed the c o mplete demolition of Warsaw in order to build “the new German city of Warsaw”, which would have housed less than a hundred thousand inhabitants. The city model realised virtually by Polisiewicz manifests the ambiguous historical dimension and also disturbs the viewer with its visual attractiveness: the aesthetics of the ensemble are based on elements of a monumental, modernistic classicism that presents itself as an icon of stereotype totalitarian architecture. Polisiewicz’s concept can be regarded as critical art concerning the mediatising of collective memory.
We are showing Wartopia in collaboration with the Polish Institute Berlin, where the exhibition can be viewed subsequently (4th – 28th February 2009, www.polnischekultur.de).
“Wartopia”
16th January – 1st February 2009
2009 marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War and the German invasion of Poland and in remembrance, Künstlerhaus Bethanien is showing the project Wartopia by the Polish artist Aleksandra Polisiewicz (curator: Bozena Czubak).
Aleksandra Polisiewicz was born in Katowice, Poland, in 1974 and lives and works in Warsaw.
In Wartopia the artist essays a virtual recreation of the city of Warsaw according to unrealised National Socialist plans dating from the first years of the Second World War. In architectonic urban panoramas displayed as coloured prints, animations and design models, her visual reproductions reveal an equivocal view of history.
Aleksandra Polisieweicz carried out extensive research for the project Wartopia and made it the foundation to her virtual reconstruction of an uncompleted and still largely unknown chapter of recent history. The starting point for the urban visions of Wartopia, which were generated using 3D- technology, was the National Socialists’ urban developmental concepts: they proposed the c o mplete demolition of Warsaw in order to build “the new German city of Warsaw”, which would have housed less than a hundred thousand inhabitants. The city model realised virtually by Polisiewicz manifests the ambiguous historical dimension and also disturbs the viewer with its visual attractiveness: the aesthetics of the ensemble are based on elements of a monumental, modernistic classicism that presents itself as an icon of stereotype totalitarian architecture. Polisiewicz’s concept can be regarded as critical art concerning the mediatising of collective memory.
We are showing Wartopia in collaboration with the Polish Institute Berlin, where the exhibition can be viewed subsequently (4th – 28th February 2009, www.polnischekultur.de).