Opening: Friday, February 22, 2019, 7 pm
The exhibition is on view through March 30, 2019
Tuesday–Saturday, from 12 noon – 7 pm
Przemysław Walczak notes the omnipresence of more or less subtle disciplines and constraints in public space. He proposes products designed so as to discreetly eliminate unwanted behaviour on the part of their users, filling the exhibition space with inconspicuous architectural elements meant to discourage ‘inappropriate’ activities.
A carpet hanger you can’t climb, an insurmountable balustrade, seats with back supports that make you think twice about relaxing in them, an anti-leaning wall cornice, or deterrent metal spikes – Walczak himself designs and builds all these behaviour-controlling items, transforming the gallery into a space of increasingly controversial, hostile design. He presents openly aggressive forms, such as the metal spikes, but also at first sight imperceptible interior-design features that blend with their surroundings and street-furniture items that deny their utilitarian functions.
The discomfort the exhibition viewer is meant to experience is the same one we encounter in urban spaces, disciplining their users with ever greater efficiency to enforce certain behaviours and prevent other ones. Doubts about and criticism of such practices began to mount when what was originally meant as an antidote to the dangers and pathologies of social life began to perform isolating functions, limiting the accessibility of public space. When next to the traffic-aiding barriers and guide posts there began to appear places bristling with sharp studs, and benches, defying the principles of ergonomics, became increasingly uncomfortable. Discomforting urban design as a means of coping with the discomfort caused by unwanted users of public space is an obvious instrument of oppressive, discriminatory policies. Liaisons between design and social engineering go back a long way, including ambitions of total design control and more particular interests generously investing in social-engineering procedures of comfort design.
Walczak’s exhibition shows the price that this comfort comes at. The items he has designed and built comprise a laboratory, as it were, of forms and surreptitious techniques whose ambiguous functionality raises questions about how our behaviour in public space is actually regulated.
Przemysław Walczak (born 1991) received his degree from the Faculty of Media Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 2015. He was a lecturer at the University of Social Sciences in Warsaw from 2015 to 2017 and an assistant at professor Sławomir Ratajski’s Studio of Artistic Concepts from 2015 to 2018. He now works for the National Ethnographic Museum as an information systems coordinator and as a parkour coach for Parkour United. He took part in many group exhibitions organised by the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, ”Światoobraz” (2014) among others. In 2014 his solo exhibition „Halcyon Years” was shown at Turbo Gallery in Warsaw.
