“In art ‘manipulation game’ is an unworthy and exceptionally shameful notion. It is generally believed that a true artist is a sincere person who deeply experiences his or her existence as rooted in suffering and great passion. An artist is a distinct, specially predisposed oddity, immersed in the mystery of his or her own peculiar practices. At the same time, I'm really curious if I am an artist or not. Because I can state categorically that throughout the entire life of my art I have been feeding on manipulation that serves me to blur a clear personal image. I'm convinced that an artist is a kind of a deceitful swindler, a social ulcer whose vitality is manipulation for one's own ends as a sign of self-defence against annihilation, or public acceptance and recognition.”
Józef Robakowski, I Manipulate!, 1988
(the leaflet by Józef Robakowski, the invitation to the exhibition Energetic Angles, Mała Gallery, Warsaw, 1988)
To begin writing about Grzegorz Drozd, let me quote a classic who is at the same time one of few authorities accepted by Polish artists of the young generation. Józef Robakowski (b. 1936) is a consistent explorer of the matter and ontology of the media image. Drozd, on the contrary, treats the media, conventions and aesthetics as exchangeable tactics resulting from a general strategy of the „change of traffic flow”. The catalogue of these tactics includes not only easel, representational painting, objects, photography, found footage, video installations, documentaries, performance, interventions, but also editing an art magazine or initiating the cooperation between artists. Technical competence makes it easier for the artist to exchange his tools, be unpredictable and use manipulation. It is in the role of a manipulator that Drozd might meet Józef Robakowski.
In our private conversation, the critic Łukasz Guzek once called Robakowski “a revolving player” who is still able to „do everything”. Drozd is too, such a player, occupying a special, or even suspicious place in Polish art. Drozd, therefore, uses paradoxical rights of a familiar outsider, a young artist who is not that young at all, a beginner already having rich artistic experience. He seems to be an element that does not fit the system. Moreover, I think he could sign Manipulator’s Manifesto, especially the fragment speaking of artistic vitality drawn from “manipulation for one’s own ends”, perceived as a strategy of “self-defence against annihilation, or public acceptance and recognition”.
Drozd himself goes even further in his declarations: “To me the artist is a social outlaw and a criminal”.
If an artist is “a criminal”, what is then “the crime” of his art all about?
History of crime
Where does the story begin? Maybe on a barracks pallet depicted in Drozd's painting Army mates. There is a crowd of soldiers sitting on the bed. The silhouettes of men are painted with strong patches of green paint – the platoon of recruits changes into a collection of painting gestures. It is yet possible to recognize the guitar among the green – it may be an emblem signaling the artist’s presence in this representation. “I used to be the army clown. I used to paint officers with pheasants or accompany the drunk corps on a guitar” – the artist recalls his army service.
Grzegorz Drozd has the so-called vivid life story. He used to be a soldier, musician in a band, emigrant, painter, physical worker, technical worker assembling other artists' exhibitions and art student in Lublin. He was 31 years old when he became a student of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. As a grown-up man with noticeable experience he decided to become an apprentice of art.
Is it likely that the story begins somewhere else, much later and in other circumstances? In 2003 Drozd fenced off the corridor at the Faculty of Painting with a huge double-sided photorealistic painting of a brick wall. As it all was about painting, the gesture of building a brick painting could have been understood in terms of a symbolic action, but at the same time it should have been perceived as literally as possible. Wall, although a representation, played its role, i. e. 'fenced off' the passage, disorganized or, one should say, reorganized the traffic in the building. “(The wall) functioned so effectively that it triggered an avalanche of criticism, starting from colleagues who referred to my action by tapping their foreheads, to the faculty councils, my visits at the dean's office and a general atmosphere of a scandal. The brick-painted wall made people change their ways of communication in the building. Confronted with the blockade of the first floor, they were made to walk around. This change of their daily tracks was uncomfortable enough to cause aggression. The dean's office secretary wasn't able to walk the way she always did. Professor X and Professor Y had to make a few steps more than usual. Someone bumped into the wall while walking ahead lost in thought. Suddenly everything was subordinate to the wall.”
The meaning of Wall was undefined, yet at the Academy it was recognized (not without reason) unequivocally – as the criticism of the Academy. Drozd said that panic and anger caused by his work went beyond his expectations. Besides it is remarkable that the anxiety of the artistic institution was produced by the work of which the key element was to destroy routine. Although the transformation occurred at the symbolic level, it was related to the system of the institution. The side effect of the action was still another change – Drozd's break-off with Prof. Leon Tarasewicz's studio in which he had studied until the 'wall scandal' broke out.
Stick in the spokes
To me Wall is an emblematic work in Drozd's artistic practice. His act of building the wall coincides with the gradual development of ZOR project (Change of Traffic Flow), which as most of Grzegorz Drozd's undertakings falls outside any simple genre-related or institutional classifications. ZOR is a hot slogan, an idea and a program; it is also a formal, non-governmental organization run by Drozd and Alicja Łukasiak that deals with editing and artistic events. While building the brick wall at the Academy, ZOR functioned as a real place too, an independent artistic space curated by artists, located in a former pub, a basement at Smolna street in Warsaw.
The project Wall was the display of ZOR's possibilities in practice, even in the most literal sense. Painting/constructing the Wall was the moment Drozd started to cause problems: make barriers, block the traffic, put a stick in the spokes of the processes of art production and consumption. What is the sabotage for? The artist keeps blocking this tandem bicycle someone always wants to ride with him – sometimes it is an art teacher or a curator, and some other time a gallery owner or an art collector. The tandem bicycle serves to execute agile volte-faces and show off in front of the public. Yet Drozd likes losing deliberately the rhythm of the ride, unbalancing the vehicle or even trying to make it fall down – even if later he feels aversion from the riders because of such an unpredictable partner.
Breaking off the show
“The unexpected change of roles”, questioning the authorities, (self)defence through attack – these are tactical moves typical of Grzegorz Drozd’s artistic strategy. The strategy also includes his desire to deprive art of conventionality, to decipher its metaphors so that things and people are given adequate names, places are easy to recognize and the time is real. The area Drozd moves in is usually defined by his reaction to a particular situation (competition, diploma work, status quo at the Academy), a local community being a partner in a project, a group of artists cooperating in a project (Cooperative, ZOR in Laboratory, Runaway from Civilization, Development), or finally, an autobiography. Drozd is not satisfied with a safe position of an author; he prefers partnership and his active presence in art.
In the following part of the book Grzegorz and I talk about his devious participation in such exhibitions as Establishment (as the source of suffering) and Heart is a lonely hunter. I believe Drozd's actions carried out within these exhibitions exemplify his practice of breaking off unwritten contracts between participants in the art game: the institution, the curator, the artist and the public. Breaking off contracts is irritating and generates considerable confusion, yet on the other hand, it gives an opportunity to think over some paragraphs of these unwritten arrangements. Drozd deconstructs art perceived as a staged show. He makes an attempt to break off the performance – he is like an actor who suddenly stops playing his role, and starts to speak to the audience and other actors his own text not to be found in the script, inviting the viewers to come backstage.
Let us do it then. We come backstage through the door to which unauthorized persons do not generally get the key. Therefore, as an “artist-criminal” Drozd uses picklocks. One of them was the work Commission sent in 2006 for the Samsung Art Master competition for young artists. The jury faced a bolted box with the instruction ordering to open the mysterious package during the jury deliberations. Having opened the box, the commission I was a member of found a video camera with a tape and full batteries, a stand and another instruction. Drozd ordered to install the camera on the stand, point it at the commission immediately, start recording and continue until the tape ends, and finally, make the video public at the final exhibition. So the artist exposed the commission, which gathered to evaluate (among others) his artistic work, and excoriated the evaluation mechanism. As a participant in the competition he became a clog in the institutional machinery. In new circumstances the “object” was given initiative and subjectivity, becoming not just a “defendant” but at least an equal partner, and an evaluator.
Insider
In the interview included in this book Prof. Leon Tarasewicz, Drozd's former art teacher at the time of realization of Wall, questions the artist's institutional criticism, in particular the one directed at the Academy. He wonders whether it makes sense to study at the institution of which the structure and the staff competence are questioned by the student. Why to defend one's graduation work if the person believes the whole procedure of receiving a degree in arts is just a meaningless ritual and a farce? These are rhetoric questions but Drozd's answer is serious. In fact, Drozd tries as a rule to change the organization of traffic flow from the inside. In his attitude the artist resembles the so-called pseudo-avantgardists of the 70's. In 1971 the main representatives of the formation, Zofia Kulik and Przemysław Kwiek (at that time working in a duet KwieKulik) presented their project Variants of Red. Edward Gierek's Way, a proposition of a new visual language for socialist society. KwieKulik showed the project from the position of artists applying for membership in the communist party (PZPR), reformers involved authentically in the idea of socialism and caring for this ideology. It is typical that because of the engagement their attitude was recognized by socialist authorities as particularly subversive and dangerous. KwieKulik were never accepted in the party, not to mention their artistic propositions.
So Drozd builds the brick-painted wall across the corridor at the Academy exactly because he is its student. He exposes the competition procedure as a participant in the competition. He provokes discussions on the procedure of graduation at the Academy because he is a part of this mechanism (and he demands the status of a subject!). He displays critical thinking about exhibitions he takes part in. The rule of participation is a key and deliberate strategy in his artistic practice. Maybe it is the only effective one.
Change
Let us point to the fact that in Drozd's project of art the change and creating conditions for the change are a value on its own. The artist does not necessarily present the world after the change (of the institution, the art world, the school, or procedures). Should we demand such a proposition from him? To answer this question let me quote Krzysztof Wodiczko's statement from the interview Jacek Tomczuk and I carried out with the artist at the beginning of 2009.”Questioning a situation, one doesn't have to know its solution. The fact that people march and protest against a situation doesn't mean that they have to have a ready solution. It's a bureaucratic way of thinking. In democracy we all have the right to protest. The protest – as the very word indicates – is positive. Pro is related to testis which means testifying to what one went through. I testify that I have experienced something unacceptable and that is why I protest against it. (…)
We've been constantly offered visions of the future which, in fact, are masks blurring the situation that is unacceptable today! Therefore, concentration on what one experiences at the time being and what one experienced in the past is not bad, or futile. There is the question of responsibility of intelligence. If we don't do this analytical, critical work, the situation, in my opinion, will regress. It's hard to say to what degree our actions improve on the situation. We should rather think what would happen if we didn't do it. (…) To disturb, to provoke, to inspire with a discourse on issues people would rather didn't talk about is a positive process because it helps democracy. I think the worst thing in a democratic society is the passivity of civilians. Another curse is the lack of vulnerability to various tyrannies, oppression and injustice. It's not right when in the process of democracy we're not continuously alert; when we neglect to check the areas that seem to be all right for elements of tyranny.”
Lack
One of the crucial moments in Drozd's career was his graduation work and its continuation, the exhibition Lack.
As befits a “deceitful swindler”, “a social ulcer” or even “a criminal”, the artist uses forms taken from the criminal code. In his diploma work Drozd blackmailed the examining board into making a decision about awarding him a certificate of artistic maturity.
As a graduate of the Faculty of Painting Drozd was supposed to show paintings for his diploma exhibition. So he did. Sixty five oil paintings on canvas depicted letters cut out from newspapers – each represented one sign. They were arranged in the following text: “I want a first-class Honours Degree, otherwise I‘ll tell everybody what you have done”. A threat expressed by means of a painting installation was justified by the second part of the diploma project – in photographic self-portraits Drozd appeared with his face covered with tattoos which, in the prison subculture, represent criminal hierarchy of prisoners or the type of crime of which they were convicted. Drozd depicted himself as an artist-criminal who stops being a student and turns into a blackmailer trying to hold his masters in check.
By blackmailing his assessors, the artist put a stick in the spokes of the examining procedure and strengthened his position in confrontation with the body of assessors. Drozd juxtaposed his own assessment and the professors' verdict, neutralizing the institutional advantage of the Academy over himself. This way the artist intended to create the space for an equal discussion instead of evaluation process.
In Drozd's graduation work the aspect of cornering the professors was not essential. On the contrary, in this game checkmating the opponent would result in the lack of movement, while the sense of Drozd’s practices is the very movement, the change of its organization, putting fossilized systems the artist confronts with into motion. Drozd’s works – independently from the medium: painting, video, installation, action, or even curating projects – function best as catalysts for situations, or elements animating relationships between people as well as, what is important, between people and institutions.
To catch Drozd
“Today art is almost totally centered on happening, reception, interpretation. Today no one concentrates so much on an object any more. Today art is engaged to a large degree. It's social and open to contexts. This is the art I always wanted.” - Jan Świdziński, one of the key artists and theorist of the 70's neo-avant-garde in Poland, said in the interview with Ewa Michalik. Does Drozd's artistic practice exemplify the art postulated in the 70's by Świdzinski, and other critical artists of that decade? In the mid-70's Świdzinski in his publication Theses on contextual art elaborated that artistic practice should be about “inventing the signs and gestures which, being radically open, gain the meaning only (and always afresh) in a particular moment, and every time in a specific context of interpersonal social exchange between people. Drozd made a number of attempts to meet these postulates. The art of the so-called pseudo-avant-garde of the 70's that was provocative, made with the contestant instinct, anticipating action and social integration, going beyond barriers between art and various areas of life (from privacy to politics) is a tradition in the context of which it is interesting to look at Drozd's art coming 30 years later, the more so that the “pseudo-avant-garde” movement is becoming a more and more vital point of reference at the contemporary art scene in Poland.
The matter is not yet that simple, and the positioning of Grzegorz Drozd is a risky undertaking in the context of searching for both references in the near history and his place in the contemporary art world. To some observers the artist's versatility, or one would say inconsistence, is disorienting enough not to consider Drozd an artist at all but instead, for instance, a curator, a recreational leader, a meta-artist “curating” different artists called Grzogorz Drozd. Among those many Drozds there is a critic of institutions, a relational, participation-related and social artist practising art “as politics made with different means”. There is also the author of works – vehicles of personal emotions, and a painter whose versatile painting with changeable conventions might be the theme of a distinct essay. There is the author of (over)expressive film Operator and a director of postmodernist living picture Municipal Guard (made in the technique of photography), in which the workers of Warsaw Municipal Guard under Drozd's command repeat the gestures of the 17th century Dutch militiamen of Rembrandt's famous painting.
On the other hand, the situation may be simpler than it actually seems to be. There is no question of many Drozds or meta-Drozd, a curator. There is one artist who requires more concentration and sensitivity from his audience. He can demonstrate such freedom in order not to determine his next moves by his previous strategies; he can also ignore the limitations which should be ignored just because they do not exist. The artist that has to be rediscovered in each work over and over again may be tiring, or even cause aggression. Such a figure appears as a true “fraudster” of art, or even a “criminal”...
I perceive such an artist as someone of the kind of Dyl Sowizdrzał, an inspiring character from the medieval stories and picaresque novels. Dyl was one of the so-called “easy men”, who travelled freely all around Europe in the late Middle Ages and disturbed decent people by their lack of social belonging. They were not bound to one particular place and a clearly defined role. Therefore, they were looked at with curiosity but with suspicion too; it happened that they were made to leave cities. Dyl Sowizdrzał was an itinerant craftsman, and the more a jester sometimes pretending to be a fool, a hearty, folk and harmless prankster playing word puns, and yet questioning the world order by his mere presence, not mentioning his provocative behaviour.
Once again Lack or, History of Disobedience
Dyl Sowizdrzał liked to be literal and draw far-fetched conclusions from words treated lightly by some people. There was something of this kind in Drozd's graduation work. In his diploma blackmail Drozd demanded a first-class Honours Degree, otherwise he “would tell everybody what his assessors have done”. What strong card to play did he have? What was he to reveal? The answer was the exhibition Lack, opened the next day after the public diploma defence in the nearby exposition halls. Did he unmask someone or reveal some sensational knowledge that would expose the Academy to ridicule? If the viewers expected that, they became victims of still another manipulation of the artist. Instead of composing a pamphlet on the Academy, Drozd kept developing an autobiographic narrative in Lack, in which the confrontation with the examining board turned out to be just an episode in the history of disobedience.
This story was told in a series of works. There was a pornographic fresco scratched directly in a wall and a cut of pork fat squeezed between radiator ribs – in boarding schools, prisons, army barracks and other temples of discipline and socialization this device becomes a sexual machine. There was a set of plastic garden furniture sculpted in surreal forms with a string of hot air from a heat gun for paint removal. There was a movie about two uneducated unemployed trying to conjugate an English verb “to work”. There was a national emblem spitted over with Plasticine balls and a video depicting Drozd’s hand wrestling with the staff of the Centre for Contemporary Art – from the director, through the curator of Lack, to technical workers installing the exhibition. The sequence of works ended with a photographic installation showing a group of schoolboys escaping from the exhibition room over the brick-painted wall. The following set of artworks was a confusing combination of media and poetics that could be read as mapping the areas of conflict – not the one between the artist and the Academy, but the individual and the Institution in general. School, prison, religion, state, marriage, bourgeoisie, work or gallery – in each of its emanations the Institution tries to confine the individual in its structure, deprive him or her of subjectivity. Chances are unequal. Is it possible at all to be disobedient? It is art that brings hope – it is the space to restore the balance between the collective represented by institutions and an individual human being trying to save his or her independence - the artist defending himself against “annihilation, or public acceptance and recognition”. In this context the title Lack from Grzegorz Drozd’s diploma work could be interpreted as the absence of the artist. He is not where we would like to place, accept and neutralize him – the artist is still at large.
Stach Szabłowski
|
