Izabella Gustowska
Izabella Gustowska, Względne cechy podobieństwa XI. Światło zewnętrzne, 1985/86, technika własna, papier, 200x60 cm, z kolekcji Muzeum Ziemi Lubuskiej w Zielonej Górze.
“It is really,” the artist confessed about her work, “about searching for my own identity in threads such as the duality of twinship (I’m a twin myself); the lookalike or the double; the shadow – an eternal presence; or the phantom and the mirror image.”
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True to the above, in works from the series she showed multiplied (usually twinned) self-images, their outlines, shadows, or mirror reflections, exploring complex relations between real existence and existence “reflected in a reflection,” between self and existence “beyond the self,” between mimetism and an “own form of realness.” She worked using photographic technique: documentation pictures, recording specific realities, were painterly processed, that is manually retouched, which emphasized their expressiveness (some radiate eroticism, others are disturbingly dramatic). This subjective intervention in an “objective,” immediate, mechanical record accentuated the privacy of the author’s existential confession. At the same time, the symbolism of the colours used (red, green…) alluded to universal matters: transience, death, rebirth in eternity.
https://culture.pl/pl/tworca/izabella-gustowska, accessed: 12 October 2020
One of her best-known series of works is Relative Features of Resemblance (1979-1990), raising issues of the “duality of existence,” the doubleness (twinship) of human personality, and a quest for one’s own, distinct, female identity. The works (photographic objects with images of women usually in natural scale) are imbued with a strong inner energy and characterized by a suggestive expressiveness of the visual message. These depictions, as can be supposed, are meant as private confessions, the artist’s existential confrontation with various aspects of “femininity” and personal presence in a world of real and subconscious phenomena.
exhibition catalogue, Galeria AT, http://galeria-at.siteor.pl/gustowska03, accessed: 12 October 2020
– Izabella Gustowska, from the series Relative Features of Resemblance X. Inner Light, 1985, mixed media, paper, 200 × 60 cm, collection of the Lubusz Land Museum
Izabella Gustowska (b. 1948 in Poznań) is Full Professor, teaching in the Experimental Film Studio 1 at the Faculty of Media Arts of the University of Arts in Poznań, and in the Graphic Design programme at the Collegium da Vinci. She lives and works in Poznań. Working in a variety of media, she has participated in major international and domestic exhibitions, and her works are held in museum, gallery, and private collections in Poland and abroad, e.g. at MoMA, New York, Susch Museum, Switzerland, National Museum in Wrocław, National Museum in Warsaw, National Museum in Poznań, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, or the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw.
iza@gustowska.com
gustowska.com
Life Is a Story, National Museum in Poznań, 2007
SHE/Ona, Old Abattoir, Poznań, 2009
I Remember How… I Remember That…,PGS, Sopot, 2015
The Case of Edward H., the Case of Iza G., Galeria Arsenał, Elektrownia, Białystok, 2015
New York and a Girl, Galeria Art Stations, Poznań, 2015/16
Hybrid: Media Story, 60-minute video performance, Pawilon, Poznań, 2018
Recent publications:
66 Persons Search for Iza G., 2012
I Remember How… I Remember That… Works from 1979-1990 -2015
Nowy Jork and a Girl, 2017, Czas Kultury
The Case of Josephine H., film, 50’, 2014, made in New York City
Hybrid, artist’s book, 2014
In 2014, The Case of Josephine H. was shown at T-Mobile Era Nowe Horyzonty International Film Festival in Wrocław, the 11th Annual Big Apple Film Festival in New York, New Voices, Ancient Echoes: Polish Women in Film, New York, or at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, among other venues. The artist is currently working on a new exhibition and a feature film under the joint title Absolute Features of Resemblance. The exhibition will be on view at the Zamek Culture Centre in Poznań in October-November 2020, the film is in the making.