Mass and Mood
Stereo gallery / WARSAW (Poland)
11.03.2015 – 18.04.2015

In order to find a correct word and to express our thoughts, we often look for an analogy in the physical world. Associations and comparisons - the inevitable "like" that we put between feelings and objects to describe them - are the main tools of language. We speak about one reality, citing/creating and hastily sketching another one; in this way speech and text get stronger. The latest work by Gizela Mickiewicz reflects a gathering in which she took part. "A small group of people was getting bigger with time and becoming increasingly loud. For a long time I watched how new people were greeted in different ways and how the atmosphere was changing depending on who came. I noticed that when trying to name those changes in the atmosphere - something that does not exist tangibly - I reach for very specific words, used for descriptions of solid matter. I started my private game and began to exaggerate those subtle changes. The coming people were almost like shapes with their associated weights and properties: some sticky and ugly as a frayed cotton candy, other proud and branchy, under which we are happy to sit down, while another person was concave on each side. Together, they created the shape of the meeting; strange and heterogenous in many places. I remember it mainly as a visual and material experience".
The exhibition "Mass and Mood" consists of a series of sculptural works that illustrate complex mental states. Shapes, textures and weight of matter, as well as relations between objects create messages, reflecting the emotional tensions and subtleties specific for internal states. Therefore a state not easily expressed in words finds its material representation, or even the embodiment. The aim of Mickiewicz is to "reduce the subtle internal sensation to a solid body" - a visual representation of moments such as the internal conflict, experience of conflicting feelings, vague feelings, the nuances of human relationships - and capture them before they are named.
Zuzanna Hadrys, Michal Lasota

Image courtesy of Stereo gallery, Warsaw

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