Julita Wojcik artist-in-residency at Art in General OCTOBER 1 – NOVEMBER 30, 2006. Exhibition showing documentation of her public actions is on view through November 30 at:
Art in General
79 Walker Street
New York, NY 10013-3523
tel. (212) 219-0473
Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 12—6pm The last in a series of public performances will take place on November 22, 10 AM
at Wollman Rink, Central Park at 63rd Street (212) 439-6900
Whether actions, videos, or sculptures, the Polish artist Julita Wójcik describes her work as an exploration on the theme of the commonplace. Her actions appear ordinary, but are usually performed in an atypical place or situation. For her actions, Julita has sat down and simply peeled potatoes, plenty of them, and continuously, at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw; she has worn an apron and swept, fruitlessly, the floors of a once popular and now abandoned textile factory in the city of Łódź; she has connected her kayak to a dock on the River Duagava, and rowed relentlessly to bring closer two Latvian neighborhoods before new urban developments cause gentrification.
For her residency at Art in General, Julita Wójcik has conceived a new action-based work where art, the ordinary, lifestyle, training, and performance can all be explored at the same time. She found ice skating as a conceptual knot for these interests and has been taking professional figure skating lessons to prepare for a series of appearances on public ice skating rinks throughout New York City. During these actions Julita performs in a special costume modeled on her girl/woman logo inspired by international gender symbols. A single channel video projection documenting Julita’s classes and performances, updated each week as they happen, is presented in Art in General’s Project Space gallery.
“Belonging to a generation that tries to erase the line drawn between art and life, she consciously turns the banality of life into a means of communication with the audience.[…] She is aware of the lost link between art and the audience and she wants to energize the discussion about art”. – Aneta Szylak, Architectures of Gender: Contemporary Women’s Art in Poland, exhibition catalogue, SculptureCenter, 2003 Julita Wójcik’s residency is part of Art in General’s Eastern European Residency Exchange, which gives artists the opportunity to create a new work in a new context and to meet and interact with art communities in Eastern Europe and New York City. Julita Wójcik’s residency at Art in General is made possible thanks to the support of the Trust for Mutual Understanding and the Polish Cultural Institute in New York.
Presented by
Art in General and
Polish Cultural Institute
