Magdalena Kwiatkowska

Magdalena Kwiatkowska is an artist of Polish descent, who became a part of the Czech art environment through her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where she completed her doctoral studies in 2016. In Prague, she started to discover Czech action art and performances, which eventually led to her transfer from the Studio of Drawing to the Studio of Vladimír Skrepl and Jiří Kovanda. Noticeable in her work is especially the influence of the latter with whom she shares common foundations. These include working with daily, often almost banal motives, which the artist transfers to the gallery environment.

Magdalena Kwiatkowska makes exclusively installations and performances. These two media of artistic expression overlap in her work because the performance aspect of a gesture that is her foundation is important for her installations. The most frequent one is the transfer of a situation, making it more visible. The leitmotiv of her work consists in the focusing of one’s attention on the forgotten nooks of human activities, which seem to be ordinary, but when we pause, we realize that, on the contrary, they are instantaneously magical and fun.

She has been drawn to examining everydayness since her studies, and she continues to enrich it by new elements, or she extends it and transfers it to an art context. Examples of enriching include interventions, when Kwiatkowska creates models of food resembling objects by Claes Oldenburg, from merchandise in a furniture store chain. Subsequently she creates an opposing process of infiltrating these elements and installation into the gallery environment. However, there is still the origin of something artificial – some kind of artistic construction. In the last year of her studies, Kwiatkowska does not use the genre of everydayness only as inspiration, but directly as the actual final art work. Part of her diploma work is a slice of an orange lying on the side of a sausage that has been cut off. This strangely looking culinary combination is in reality an imaginative way of not allowing the sausage to dry out. This handyman advice comes from the book Dobré rady pro každý den (Good Advice for Every Day) which is the source for other types of illustrations that were part of her thesis work.

One of the works that Kwiatkowska created while still in school – the installation Dvouminutové cvičení koncentrace (Two-Minute Concentration Exercise) (2007) – is an example of the strong performance aspect of a situation. It offers the viewer other practical and useful exercises. It consists of an armchair and television on a TV stand with a clock in front of it. In order to complete the exercise one must look at the clock for two minutes without glancing over at the TV. This holds a special place in the context of her other installations because the viewer is not a passive observer of the interaction of objects, but rather a participant of a workshop or happening.

Balancing between the media of performance and installation is also present at two other exhibitions, where, after completing her master’s degree, Kwiatkowska presented herself in cooperation with another artist. The exhibition happening Dvě slepé baby (Two Blind Old Women) (2013) originated in cooperation with Eva Jiřičkova. Inspired by the children’s game blind man’s bluff, the two artists created the content of the exhibition and participated in the opening blindfolded.  Their intention was to evoke a different perception of the exhibition situation for themselves as well as for the viewers.

Magdalena Kwiatkowska’s newest project is a book that was published as a part of her thesis work at the Academy of Fine Arts. Děti z Absurdlandu (Children from Absurdland) is a thin book of stories that Magda and other children experience in Absurdland – a non existing country, which, however, finds its model in current society. The selected narrative style of the book resembles children’s books as Magda delivers the image of the world through the eyes of naïve children. Her commentary, however, often contains strange and non-childish stories. For example, her brother Zbigniew builds concentration camps from Lego. The book also underscores its double meaning with allusions to art works from contemporary Czech art. A knowledgeable reader can be entertained by the relaxed description of Eva Koťátkova’s work: “The desks in a classroom are put on top of each other creating a strange hierarchic structure for reading, writing, drawing and sitting. If you want to reach the top you have to climb the desks or chairs of your colleagues. Students are sitting on each level performing various acts. Their placement in the respective level designates their position and activity. We are supposed to sit straight and not move at school. Fortunately, supporting structures are put in place for all cases that are supposed to hold our bodies in the required position. The cages via which we are learning effective positions for reading and writing, prevent us from doing anything else.”

In the end, Absurdland turns out to be an allegory of the contemporary art scene – a sort of demythologisation of artists and a humorous and original view of present society.

publikace Děti z Absurdlandu, vydala AVU, Praha 2016

Viktor Čech, Dcery tužky, Ateliér č. 24/2010

Orientace/Salon, Lidové noviny 01/2009

Jan Zálešák, Jak na to jde Magdalena Kwiatkowska, Ateliér 03/2008