One of the most outstanding contemporary artists, Krzysztof Wodiczko is well known to the Polish and international audience for his pioneering art practices in public domain. Author of over 90 audiovisual projections staged in various parts of the world, he is among the leading representatives of a critical and utopian discourse of art.
Transition, an exhibition at the Profile Foundation, focuses on the less known early period of his work in the 1970s. The show documents Wodiczko’s performative actions, such as Object for Seeing and Hearing (1970) with Szabolcs Esztenyi and Elzbieta Góral or Action in Space (1972) with Włodzimierz Borowski and Jan Świdziński. A unique insight into the artist’s 1970s practice is provided by a reconstruction of two crucial works from the era: Passage, a spatial installation destroyed after its 1972 presentation at the Współczesna Gallery in Warsaw, and the projection References (1976), a take on the relationships between politics and aesthetics. The originally 20-metre-long corridor of Passage with a system of mirrors, a metaphor of moving on to social issues, and the projective References define the key themes of Krzysztof Wodiczko’s early work, continued in his later practice and his critical/utopian art discourse.
