Waśko, Ryszard and Workshop of Film Form.

[CONCEPTUAL ART IN POLAND – WORKSHOP OF FILM FORM] Original documentation of three films by Ryszard Waśko and Workshop of Film Form 1972–1975.

Łódź, [1975]. Single sheet measuring 29.8 × 21 cm with typescript and 12 small vintage gelatin silver prints (each ca. 2.8 × 4.3 cm) to recto. Signed in pencil to lower left corner. Lightly chipped to lower edges, discoloration due to stock. Still about very good. Item #55263

Original, unique documentation of three experimental films, accompanied by typescript instructions by one of the key members of the avant-garde Film Form Workshop (1970–1977), Ryszard Waśko (b. 1947), showcasing his “meditations on the possibilities and limits of representing space in film.” The films “24 sytuacje dzwiękowe” [24 sound situations], and “Chodzę pomiędzy” [Walking between], two studies of the way sound impacts the viewer’s perception of space, are each presented with six photographic stills and a short explanatory typescript text. The 1972 film “Rejestrasja” [Recording] credited to Waśko and Film Form Workshop, is presented only in the form of textual analysis, suggesting that the two later films are elaborations on the study of spatiality introduced in Recording (1972). Lukasz Ronduda writes: “in Recording, Waśko characteristically determined montage through mathematical process. He isolated a segment in reality that stretched from point A to Point B. Next, he divided it into twenty-nine equal parts. Points thus arrived at established the position of the camera. Waśko recorded reality from these points and then edited the film by alternating between fragments recorded, going from A to B and from B to A. Such a displacement of point of view locates the viewer inside a claustrophobic space”.

This analytic as opposed to narrative approach to film, as well as the interest in human perception as it is augmented by the film medium was typical of the works produced by the members of the Film Form Workshop, founded by the students of the Łódż School of Radio and Television in 1970. The members of the Workshop, the most active of which where Ryszard Waśko, Wojciech Bruszewski, Paweł Kwiek, Józef Robakowski, created conceptualist video works, with many of the workshop members later moving into photography, installation, performance, and other art media. Among them, “Waśko most fully analyzed the problem of space in film. His works are defined by a shift in focus, from temporality, characteristic of narrative cinema, to spatiality, characteristic of the fine arts” (See: “The Film Form Workshop: Between Art and Cinema” in Polish Art of the 70s, pp. 291–291). Waśko would continue to develop his method of presenting film, moving from video recordings to making mixed media diagrams such as this one, to finally inviting viewers to make “hypothetical films” through “mental projections” based on his scores, drawings and diagrams. After the dissolution of the Film Form Workshop, Waśko embarked on an ambitious curatorial project, organising an international art festival “Konstrukcja w Procesie” [Construction in Process], with participation of major contemporary international artists, such as Sol Lewitt, Richard Nonas, Les Levine, Lawrence Weiner, and Paul Sharits, among others. Held in Łódź in 1981 at the Budrem factory, the festival was supported by the local branch of the trade union Solidarnośċ [Solidarity]. Connecting art with political descent, the festival used the Solidarnośċ font for their posters. The announcement of Martial Law in Poland in 1981 as a response to Solidarnośċ strikes would lead to the temporary suspension of all cultural activity in Poland. Waśko immigrated to Germany in the same year.

Waśko's work is held by numerous institutional collections including Berlinische Galerie, Centre Pompidou, and the World Bank art collection in Washington DC.

Price: €4,500.00

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