Article Number: 4576
Soft Cover, English, Staple Binding, 58 Pages, 2011
Philipp Messner

O grawitacji/On Gravity

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This book was published as a result of Philipp Messner's six-month residency at a-i-r laboratory and the exhibition 'On Gravity' in Foksal Gallery, Warsaw, Poland.

His work focuses on an analysis of the process of human perception. He primarily depicts objects in space in works which frequently revolve around the concept of symbolic forms and their functions. At one and the same time, he also plays with the viewer’s visual perception, introducing elements which construct a subtle tension between fiction and reality.

Messner’s exhibition at the Foksal Gallery presents works constituting an endeavour to examine the relationship between the schematic cultural images contained within phrases and symbols so widespread as to be almost hackneyed and their ‘literal’ translation into visual form. A three-channel video projection shows a donkey straining toward a carrot. Dangling from a stick, it stirs him into movement, though it remains immutably and ever beyond reach. Messner also calls upon both national and nationalistic symbols from the Second World War and, using the power of nature, neutralises and dims the significance with which history has burdened them.

Language: English and Polish