the beginning the end

the beginning the end

4th March – 15th April 2016

 

An old truth says who holds the beginning and the end has the power (or control) over the whole.

MMS2 is pleased to present its first exhibition the beginning the end titled after the work of Michal Martychowiec.

The show combines the historic works of Zdzisław Jurkiewicz and Eustachy Kossakowski’s photographic documentation of a performance of Edward Krasiński together with contemporary works of Michal Martychowiec.

At the first glance the formal similarities as much as the title which holds heavily metaphysical references might be misleading as the presented works are essentially neither about the formal and contextual qualities of the line nor the existential understanding of the exhibition’s title.

In J’ai perdu la fin (I lost the end) from 1969 we see an image of Edward Krasiński entangled in a cable and presumably looking for the end (or the beginning) of it.

The paintings of Zdzisław Jurkiewicz from the cycle Shape of continuity (respectively from 1972 and 1979) bring yet another predicament: a paradox between measuring and our comprehension of the wholeness. The tangled line becomes an equivalent of a pre-determined measure. Jurkiewicz questions a measure which is normally imagined as a straight line. We can only imagine his conceptual abstract line as tangible line which can be straightened and then measured. Knowing the length of the whole is alike holding its beginning and the end.

Michal Martychowiec’s cyanotypes the beginning the end from 2010 present a photogram image (as artist’s describes it is always partially random and partially planned) of a thread, which additionally adds on an existential context as it reminds the story of the three Moirai.   Here the line of the thread becomes like a thread of Ariadne too – the line to follow. And depending on how our gaze follows what we see is either the beginning or the end. Yet despite the end which Krasiński so desperately looked for is being presented here practically ‘on the plate’ we are left equally helpless. The artist wrote: “since we cannot grasp control over both sides we cannot control the symbolic destiny: and so the only two things in our lives we have no control over: the beginning and the end”.

A pile of ash which Martychowiec installs together with his works on paper completes the concept. “Dust to dust or translating literally from the ash one raises, into the ash one turns” this transforms the idea further – from the area of the space into the area of the time.

 

MMS2
Claudiusstr. 6
10557 Berlin