"Dominik Lejman: Artist in Residence"
2003-05-22 until 2003-06-28
Polish Cultural Institute, Location One
New York, NY, USA United States of America

Dominik Lejman, a major talent among the younger generation in Polish contemporary art, who has attracted international attention with his innovative multiple layering of painting and video projections, is showing a work created during his recent residency at Location One along with the works of fellow artists-in-residence: Daniel Blaufuks (Portugal), Isabelle Jenniches (The Netherlands),Jiun-Ting Lin (Taiwan), and Javier Viver (Spain).

In "Video Murals - Social Surfaces”, Lejman employs direct recordings of crowds and urban gatherings he has filmed. This original footage is then rendered into a purely abstracted form by the artist through the creation of ornamental crowd motifs that are projected on the wall. In Lejman's words, "the structure of the mass ornament is abstract, but is not a mere abstraction. The aesthetic pleasure provided by the statistical tapestries is a form of information anesthesiology. It neutralizes the fact of being the product of a shared destiny and organic life, the function of individual personalities with unique souls". "Central Air Conditioning (Use and Care)" is dedicated to the conditioning role of the information we “inhale” on a daily basis, and to its physical effect on our survival. The gallery space is conditioned by the synthesis of information extracted from the media - creating a glass-house effect, whereby information is reduced to conditions of temperature, humidity, and ventilation. The impact is direct. In this project, the ornamental, floral pattern designed for the gallery is created from recorded images of crowds in motion, both real and virtual. 

“It is precisely the opposition between matter and absence of materiality that leads to the core of Lejman’s work: ideas of permission and transformation, lack of embodiment and the rules which might govern this. In other words, the miraculous and the quotidian and how they intersect in everyday life”. Stuart Morgan  

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