The Rise and Fall of Air
exhibition
curator: Michał Libera
cooperation: Joanna Waśko
acoustics: Ralf Meinz, Andrzej Kłosak
The Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2 July–18 August 2013
The Rise and Fall of Air is an exhibition comprising 13 display rooms of the Zachęta, and a sequel to Making the walls quake as if they were dilating with the secret knowledge of great powers, recipient of a Special Mention at the at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Whereas the Venice Pavilion served as a sound-transmitting structure, the building of the Zachęta became a construction which absorbs sounds. Both were, however, approached holistically, providing a material for sculptures and determining the scale of the interventions. The very interventions, in turn, became an integral element of architecture: their presence persists and unfolds in real time.
At the Zachęta, the artist’s attention was concentrated around an enormous system of wastes, described by architectural plans as ‘voids – technical rooms’. These are tight and inaccessible openings between walls, unused elevator shafts and staircases, as well as an entire floor of skylights. In these invisible spaces, inaccessible to the visitors, Krakowiak’s sculpture was situated – unobservable by the eye, made entirely of sound.
In a situation of working with inaccessible spaces, such a choice was most natural: nothing else but sound can, after all, reach the place the sculpture has been injected, a sound which does not travel any further.
[description based on a curatorial text]
Photos: Krzysztof Pijarski
