Malgorzata Szandala - Nearly Impossible

Last week I presented Bas Hendrikx' Award winning candy distributor "Candybars", today I'm honored to introduce the second first winner of this year's 19,99 € Award, Malgorzata Szandala, and her piece "Nearly Impossible". The thing with having two first winners is that there's a strong tendency to refer to a first first winner and second first winner. Is Bas Hendrikx the better first winner because I presented him first? (Am I a chauvinist for treating gentlemen before ladies? Or a feminist (with a sweet tooth for Marilyn Frye) for the same matter?) Or is Bas Hendrikx the less valuable first winner because I spent less words on his presentation? Then again, why do I mention his name so often? It's a damn cool name, that's for sure, but so is Malgorzata Szandala, Malgorzata Szandala, Malgorzata Szandala. I just love the beauty of echolalia. However, I really couldn't care less and I'm mostly asking myself why I'm asking myself all these damn questions. Despite the fact that there were moments in my life when my psychological constitution was to be considered more sane than it is these days, I'm rhetorically prancing through these questions because there is indeed a reason why I presented Bas first and Malgorzata second.

For weeks now I've been going through all the letters our jury members exchanged in the process of finding a decision. While reconstructing the spirit of decision making within the art industry, I discovered that our jury didn't exactly fall in love with Malgorzata's piece at first glance or as Gusti Gould Korban so felicitously verbalized: "It grows on you." Here we see "Nearly Impossible":

And here are a few things our jury members pointed out in the course of their "postmodern" discourse:

Cornelia Huth: "I like this one. A short message made of stones (that's what I see) thrown intentionally on the ground to make it look like the complete opposite, just fallen there, saying "nearly impossible", sounds like a funny parody to me. The blurry symbolic language puts it in-between: high and low quality, streetart and land-art, serious and ridiculous. As Lasse said before, I do like reading short messages everywhere as well and finding this while wandering around would make my day. Moreover, I somehow experience a zeitgeist feeling here. The phenomenon of transporting messages, expressing feelings, staying in contact, making arrangements these days. Everything you have say to your friends / family / lover / world is in 120 letters. Starting with text messages and facebook. I can’t even remember reading a letter on real paper. Like the title says: (For me) it is nearly immpossible to explain things in this form, but that's what we do all day. Funny too. I just like the twists this piece is able to transport."

Gusti Gould Korban: "I can hear the crunching sound that walking on such gravel makes, something which always makes up for its ugliness and here the touch of green does the same. The message is a pleasant surprise that subtly humanizes the barrenness. The idea is a clever one that works. It brings an immediate smile to the observer who then is able to easily make a myriad of associations both aesthetic and philosophical. And it grows on you. The combination of inanimate rubble, green life and the unexpected words of man, barely visible at first glance, makes for intelligent whimsy. I wish I were able to join you all for a drink..."

Lasse Lawrence: "Even if I don't really get the topic of this piece, I like the idea of walking down some random dirty rocky path in a nature park or something, finding such an unexpected mysterious message on my way, it reminds me of Cosmos, a book by Gombrowitz, where the walkers find a bird hanged on a branch in their way to a refuge, and start their investigation from this point - and start to see signs in the smallest elements of the surrounding environment, leading them to some unlikely speculations."

And here you see a picture of Malgorzata, Bas didn't send me one, but I'm sure he's also pretty:

Bas Henrikx - Candybars

Life ain't scary, it's just pretty expensive. Sometimes I'm glad I don't have any wives nor kids that I have to shoot when there's nothing more to pawn. Bas Hendrikx from Amsterdam, one of two winners of this year's 19,99 € Award, doesn't have to worry about money anymore.

Jury member Martin Beck writes about Bas Hendrikx' installation "Candybars" from 2009:

"Candy Bars is my winner because of its intricate and complex entanglement of the aesthetics of minimalism and our regressive desire for cheap sensual pleasures. References to minimalism can be found in its rectangular box shape as well materials such as frosted glass, metal and neon lights, rendering it a highly aesthetic piece. Yet the minimalistic practice of manufacturing a work of art with the means of industrial production seem to be reversed by artistically recreating a functional object that is itself a standardised item of serial production. The resulting piece fits well into an art space, yet it confronts our wish for a refined acknowledgment of its formal and material qualities with our regressive sensual desires and the automatism by which consumer capitalism is ready to cater them.

An image that reminds – judging from the rather bad quality picture – of a pink bucket, a drink or a meaningless abstract emblem, offers a pleasure that is as cheap as it is sweet, unhealthy and redundant. At the same time promising and withholding the designated object of our infantile desire, Candy Bars represents a study on display, taste, aesthetic experience and objecthood at times when the art sphere is increasingly incorporated in the entertainment industry."

Jury member Lasse Lawrence adds:

"I like the piece because of its triviality in an art space. [...] I like Candybars because it reminds us that art turned into the product of some diluted consumption and exhibitions are the places where this diluted consumption takes place. It's not only "let's have a break, let's have a candy bar!" it's also let's have a break, let's examine why we visit exhibition spaces, what we come here for?"

 

Goodbye Glowing Sperm - Karol Slowik

A sad day for the city, Berlin says goodbye to Karol Slowik. Confused by the smell of new leather we find Polish sculptor Karol Slowik behind the steering wheel of a rental car, singing his favorite tune with an intensity only to be understood by those who are waving goodbye as we speak. Karol is accompanied by Polish photographer Ewa Kniaziak, the very same Ewa Kniaziak that left a comment below; one of many differences between both fellows being that she's coming back in a few days, while Karol is returning to his hometown Milanowek for good.

We were close to firing our oh so retarded intern Ronny when we found out that he forgot to ask Karol for some images of his literally enlightning work. We had to show mercy with the baboon mainly because his father-in-law (well-known patron of the arts Kasper da Punchinello) is one of our major stakeholders as well as the head of our board of managment. However, we curse him for forcing us to steal footage from Karol's website and his facebook profile. For those of you who haven't heard about facebook yet, it is a marvelous social network, please check here and convince yourself of the improvement of living conditions this network has to offer.

As you can see Karol works with photoluminescent materials, lion-heartedly exposing his hands and lungs to what might be highly poisonous. His advanced techniques and crafty tricks have to remain his secret, but we do think that everyone should have one of this oversized figurines swinging like a newly-laid alien maverick above their sleeping skulls. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth, tells us Exodus, but nature refuses to cooperate. Thus we see in Karol's work an answer to prayers that have yet to be spoken and addressed to the spirits and genies that farm and fructify our souls.