Transfer of parts of Mariusz Wilczyński`s exhibition “Kill It…” shown in Zachęta – National Gallery of Art to 1:12 scale.

Vernissage and meeting with Mariusz Wilczyński and project curators - 1.12.2022 at 20.00

Venue:
Mikrob Gallery. In a beautiful old display window of Baza Club in 15 Floriańska Street in Krakow (Open: 24/7).

Curators: Marta Miś, Agata Kus

Mariusz Wilczyński exhibition in Zachęta focuses on a single film – the feature debut of this famous animator entitled Zabij to i wyjedź z tego miasta / Kill It and Leave This Town. It had its world premiere at the International Film Festival in Berlin at the beginning of 2020; however, due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the film had to wait almost a year to be allowed in cinemas. In this time, it was presented and awarded, among others, at top animation festivals in the world – in Annecy and Ottava.

Making this animation, initially planned as a short film, took 14 years. In the end a feature film was made, which is the artist`s journey through a memory land, with people and places close to him. Background for this surreal story is Lodz, the animator`s hometown, and its protagonists are real characters, invented or ones borrowed from literature. One of the most important ones is Tadeusz Nalepa – Wilczyński`s late friend and author of the soundtrack. Zabij to i wyjedź z tego miasta / Kill It and Leave This Town combines the atmosphere of a dream with realism and black humour, high culture with pop culture, personal memories with depiction of reality. The author fits traditional animation into feature film format, yet he remains within the scope of artistic film, and makes this truly Polish film universal and understandable also for the foreign viewer.

A few thousand drawings in various scales, lurking and eavesdropping the reality and language from the times of the Polish People`s Republic (the author manifests here his talent for dialogues), “sounding” the characters over the years (the cast included, among others, Andrzej Wajda, Irena Kwiatkowska, Barbara Krafftówna, Krystyna Janda, Tadeusz Nalepa, Tomasz Stańko, Gustaw Holoubek, Andrzej Chyra czy Maja Ostaszewska) as well as music by Nalepa and Breakout – all these are only a few constituent parts of this story about passing. The exhibition Kill It… in Zachęta is, first of all, constructed around contexts forming the film setting and the work itself. On the one hand, it is defined by the imagery (multi-layered town set designs, light that is different from the light used in the director`s earlier films), presented at the exhibition through original drawings and animated set design. On the other hand, Wilczyński`s total idea about sound being a vital building block of film space. The third important element of the exhibition are the scenes that were not included in the final version of the film – scored and edited in the animatika stage, showing the planned animation of the characters in simplified form, which also enables viewers to familiarize themselves with the technique of the contemporary animator.  

PROJECT CURATOR – AGATA KUS

Visual artist. Lives and works in Krakow. Graduate, PhD and assistant professor at the Department of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. Mainly focuses on painting, drawing, ceramics and video. Winner of numerous awards and scholarships, including the first prize at the International WRO Media Art Biennale 2015 in Wroclaw. In 2017 nominated for the “Spojrzenia” Award by Deutsche Bank and Zachęta. In 2011 and 2018 nominated for the scholarship by the Swiss Vordemberge-Gildeward Foundation. In 2021 won the first prize in the Young Art Compass rating published by Rzeczpospolita. Collaborated with numerous institutions and galleries in Poland, Austria and Paris. Her paintings can be seen, among others, in MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, National Museum in Gdansk, Bunkier Sztuki Gallery, mBank Collection as well as in numerous private collections in Poland and abroad.