TIFF OPEN 2020: SUNNY HILL BY BARBARA GRYKA
Multilevel system of the squered tarasses
With the banches situated on it, is a place, where several
more poetically-oriented inhabitants of the estate
wil be able to sit while listening and observing.
The estate of J. Słowackiego in Lublin is an important place. Designed in the 1960s by eminent architects - Zofia and Oskar Hansen, it was analyzed in many ways, being an inspiration for a lot of artists. The theory of Open Form was manifested in it in terms of the urban and architectural layout of the estate. As Hansen described it – this space opened one's eyes to the versatile possibilities of the community, which - as history has shown - turned out to be a utopian dream. This utopian approach became the starting point for the new project of Barbara Gryka, who - this time - decided to create the Open Form Theater. The place that is at the same time a theme and bearer of the meaning.
Łysa Góra, Łysak, Amphitheater or simply Słoneczne Wzgórze (Sunny Hill) was supposed to be a place for meetings, neighbourhood conversations and a platform for the building community. It was also supposed to be a space for those who needed art in their surroundings – as the creators and as the viewers. After all, the idea of a community is based on Hansen’s theory that [...] the architectural space can live only thanks to human beings. They are its indispensable components, the inseparable actors filling the interior: they are its co-creator. This assumption - like many others - did not work out and after a few years from its inception, the Theater began to deteriorate - both naturally and as a result of various major or minor devastations. It has become a dead spot and was not needed any longer by the local society. It became an empty shell of concrete, that did not possess any meaning.
In this project, Barbara Gryka explores different threads than those raised in the award-winning and widely presented Architecture from the Inside. Moving away from the direct imaging and leaving behind for a while the work of a researcher-sociologist, she follows the concept of absent art (created by Jerzy Ludwiński) and refers to the idea of community, stated by Open Form. She tries to show the impossible and de facto invisible.
The artist uses the theme of the forgotten Lublin Theater, which awakes our imagination and provokes us to focus on the passing moment. She tries to catch something that later became only a recollection or a story. Gryka forces us, with the help of the designed form - very similar to the shape of the Sunny Hill, to establish a temporary micro-relationship with a fellow viewer of this utopian, small community. This community like the Lublin one or the one dreamed by Hansen is not entirely justified and ... have to pass.
* Sunny Hill is a continuation of a larger research project by Barbara Gryka, as part of which the artist will visit other modernist housing estates in Poland.
Curator: Kama Wróbel
2-26.09.2020
organiser: TIFF Festival / TIFF Center
tiff.wroc.pl
exhibition photos: Jerzy Wypych
