Paulina Otowska
18 Apr - 13 May 2006
PAULINA OTOWSKA
"Painting - Exchange - Neon"
The FGF gallery located in a glass pavilion built in the early 1960s to house the Polish Chamber of Arts and Crafts, offers an exceptional view. The modernistic, glass-and-concrete building was to house an exhibition of handicraft and administrative functions. The view of downtown War-saw through the ironwork lattice windows creates an intense sense of the city’s image being present within an aquarium-like space. The view extends towards the Palace of Culture and Science, a retail trade area, and a major construction site. Paulina Ołowska’s exhibition fits preci-sely the context of a place immersed in a city undergoing a process of rapid gentrification. Painting is the pretext here for setting off a whole series of events played out in the economic and aesthetic spheres, inside and outside the gallery. A neon palimpsest, consisting of quotes from existing neon signs, attached to the building’s front wall and facing inside, fills the gallery with the aura of the city’s past, when Warsaw was decorated with more than 2,000 neon signs. Painting is a mirror here in which the city views itself, an object of desire, an object of value. The proceeds from the sale of the painting are to go towards renovating and reinstalling a modernistic neon sign on the MDM building Painting is here the process of regaining the past on the canvas and in reality. Art for art. (AP)
"Painting - Exchange - Neon"
The FGF gallery located in a glass pavilion built in the early 1960s to house the Polish Chamber of Arts and Crafts, offers an exceptional view. The modernistic, glass-and-concrete building was to house an exhibition of handicraft and administrative functions. The view of downtown War-saw through the ironwork lattice windows creates an intense sense of the city’s image being present within an aquarium-like space. The view extends towards the Palace of Culture and Science, a retail trade area, and a major construction site. Paulina Ołowska’s exhibition fits preci-sely the context of a place immersed in a city undergoing a process of rapid gentrification. Painting is the pretext here for setting off a whole series of events played out in the economic and aesthetic spheres, inside and outside the gallery. A neon palimpsest, consisting of quotes from existing neon signs, attached to the building’s front wall and facing inside, fills the gallery with the aura of the city’s past, when Warsaw was decorated with more than 2,000 neon signs. Painting is a mirror here in which the city views itself, an object of desire, an object of value. The proceeds from the sale of the painting are to go towards renovating and reinstalling a modernistic neon sign on the MDM building Painting is here the process of regaining the past on the canvas and in reality. Art for art. (AP)