Falowiec/Wavy Block
Installation. Courtesy of Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2005
The model for the crochet building was the longest block of flats in Poland built in early 1970s in Przymorze, a district of Gdańsk. [...] The architecture of glass, steel and concrete, maximally simple and functional, was extremely dehumanized in its communist version. The unified segments, staircases, and unpractical flats of this and many other such buildings had no room for individualism. [...] The crochet Wavy Block is an attempt to try oneself against the gigantic form building, to show it in a "human" scale and in a material demystifying power and strength. But it is also a struggle with the scale of the other, nonstandard matter, and with utmost concentration without which the tiny staircases, windows, and balconies would be lost. The technique used by Julita Wójcik introduces her works into the domain of deliberations about the everyday. By giving banal activities an aesthetic dimension, the artist perversely adds value to the sphere of mundane doings.
(Excerpts of the catalogue Energy Class B / text (Self)Observations of the "B" Territories by Izabela Kopania)
Artist's Bio:
Julita Wójcik (1971) – performance and video artist. Through happenings and artistic interventions, she points out conflicting aspects of social life in a swiftly-changing world. Her aim is not just to undermine certain rules and regulations that govern society, but to create new ways of looking at the stagnant customs of outdated cultural codes. She tests the boundaries of freedom and social access, wafting in a breeze of democracy into the art world, inviting the public into her circle, engaging them in various activities and breaking down the barrier between artist and spectator.