Artist
Aga Miłogrodzka
ABOUT EXHIBITION
The opening: 19.09.2014, at 19:00
curator: Paweł Brożyński
The beehive is both a shelter that guarantees bees safety and the possibility of community life as well as a means of production, a form that establishes a specific biological order for the development of a swarm. This order is subject to the logic of productivity and efficiency, which is determined by man, but which necessarily corresponds to the needs and abilities of bees. As a result, care and exploitation are almost indistinguishable, thus excluding man's pure position. Hive, however, is primarily a material object. A cuboid consisting of smaller cuboids, usually made of wood, filled with woven honeycombs in which honey accumulates. It has its fragrance, weight (beekeeper lifts and moves individual segments) and a story that intertwines with the history of the owner of the apiary (in this case the artist's father) and his family. The very sculptural form of the hive, often in the DIY convention, can fascinate with its uniqueness and variability.
A few months ago, Agnieszka Miłogrodzka decided to take a risky attempt to get closer to the world of bees. The threat of stings, which gradually disappeared with the experience gained and the process of taming, was of course not the greatest threat. This risk was the risk of not making any contact, reaching an impassable barrier separating man and insects, experiencing emptiness and senselessness of the action taken. Although an objective solution to the success or failure of the artist's undertaking is not possible, one should not hurry to give up this question. This is why it prompts you to ask more questions, which in turn - based on specific examples - allow you to examine in a laboratory the relations between the interlocking and, at the same time, separate spaces of man and animals.
On which examples does the artist suggest us to work? Agnieszka Miłogrodzka taking out from the beehive a few frames with slices - a natural environment for the life of breeding bees - and by placing crossed circles in their place she invited, but also to some extent forced the insects into artistic creation. Forms of three hanging objects are our case studies. Their hybrid identity is made up of human desire for the ideal shape of the sphere - a phantasm and a symbol of perfection, and a real animal artifact, proof of the actual perfect cooperation of the bee community. Hybrid beekeeping-human objects are accompanied by video: a documentary, but also a poetic story of the ongoing process of dissolving insoluble borders for weeks. Inside this laboratory leads a tunnel lined with wax patches, imposing a specific way of navigating the gallery - a specific biopolitics.
Paweł Brożyński