Title: Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism 12 February – 17 May 2009
Location: Tate Modern
Description: The Russian Revolution was accompanied by a remarkable period of artistic experiment known as Constructivism, which questioned the fundamental properties of art and asked what its place should be in a new society. The Constructivists challenged the idea of the work of art as a unique commodity, explored more collective ways of working, and looked at how they could contribute to everyday life through design, architecture, industrial production, theatre and film.

Liubov Popova (1889-1924) and Aleksandr Rodchenko (1891-1956) were pivotal figures in the debates and discussions that defined Constructivism. Rodchenko, whose wife Varvara Stepanova was a major artist in her own right, energetically embraced almost all of its manifestations, from advertising to photography and film. Popova’s achievements in painting, theatre, and graphic and textile design took place in spite of ill health and tragedy: her husband died of typhoid in 1919, and she spent a year recuperating from the illness herself. In 1924 she and her son both died of scarlet fever.

The Constructivists compared the artist to an engineer, arranging materials scientifically and objectively, and producing art works as rationally as any other manufactured object. This was, in theory, an art that transcended gender differences. The equality of the sexes was an important Communist principle, and this was one of the first periods in history when female artists were valued as highly as their male counterparts.
Date: 2009-02-15

Title: Przemek Matecki
Location: Hollybush Garden
Description: Przemek Matecki is a lover of the city – only here can he find traces of other people’s lives. He walks, looks around, rummages, finds and examines - collecting things that other people have left behind. Matecki is currently fascinated with found images and in particular two kinds of images; the iconic image of a pop star or a model, often found in magazines, and the anonymous image of an individual in a portrait or a family photograph. Most of Matecki’s paintings and collages consist of a careful balance of found image and abstract painting. Neither one leads the way, the two equally influencing each other.

Start Time: 18:30
Date: 2008-10-13

Faced with these images and photographs of known or unknown people, the viewer might start reading meaning into the painting, trying to put together a story about the faces, bodies, objects and the sometime fragments on show. When asked what it is we see in his paintings Matecki answers – “what you see is nothing” - it simply isn’t in his interest to speculate about meaning on behalf of the beholder. Leaving little clues in his paintings he seems more concerned with posing counter questions; what is an image, how is meaning produced and interpreted, to what extent can an image be disseminated objectively and what part of the understanding is subjective?

The subjects of the paintings are eclectic, with many allusions to history and tradition on the one hand and popular/street culture on the other. Hypothetically Matecki could belong to the disputed movement Neoism. It would suit his attitude - one that converges life and reality and which seeks to discredit a hierarchy of values. Punk has unquestionably influenced Matecki’s sensibility - the anarchist spontaneity, the simplicity, the casualness of his brush strokes, the love of the grotesque and the penchant for trash. By deliberately exposing the imperfect and the cumbersome Matecki wishes to retain the human and the flawed. There is definitely an element of anarchy in Matecki’s work, but countered by an air of melancholy.

Matecki can work on a single painting for months; the seeming spontaneity and emotional directness of his art is an illusion in the eye of the beholder. Not getting the ‘point’ of exhibitions, Matecki’s interest in a piece ends when he decides that it is finished. Ultimately it is painting as a process, as a medium that he is committed to.

Przemek Matecki lives and works in Warsaw. This will be his first solo show in Britain. Recent exhibitions include Past Present curated by Vincent Honoré for the Zabludowicz Collection at 176, Place to live, place to love, BWA Gallery, Wroclaw, Poland, Efekt czerwonych oczu Fotografia polska XXI wieku, Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw