Quality Control and Standard Verification. Sculpture

“I am interested in the question: what tolerance of precision is allowed to transform thought into a physical shape?”

Marlena Kudlicka

Marlena Kudlicka’s constructivist art plays out in several intertextual fields: language and its typographic representation; technical drawing and humanistic speculation; mechanically reproduced conception and empirically corrigible form. The artist’s metal sculptures are made in a locksmith’s shop, which becomes the site for developing shapes in a mental and physical way. However, it is not about “machinism” but, to quote Władysław Strzemiński, about the crucial features of the creative act – “the process of becoming, assembling a work of art (...)”. It is not just the artist’s conception that manifests itself in the creation of a shape, but also error – divergence from the initial intention that stems from the unpredictability of the creative act as well as the acceptable range of error in using the measuring or execution tools, which is specified in the process of their calibration and standardisation. Reflection on error has been the inspiration for the artist’s most recent cycle of works from 2014-2015 – “Protocol of error on.e”, “a divided dot”, “unprotected 0”.

Linguistic speculations in Kudlicka’s art, who uses points, letters, digits and words to create a linguistic grammar of space, situate her close to Stanisław Dróżdż’s thinking and his concept-shapes. For this reason, we dedicate Marlena Kudlicka’s exhibition to the patron of our museum.  

Marlena Kudlicka lives and works in Berlin. Her works have been exhibited in international institutions such as the Zacheta National Gallery in Warsaw, the Museum of Modern Art Lodz and CGAC in Santiago de Compostela. As well as residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, the Schloss Solitude Akademie in Stuttgard, ISCP NYC, Art Omi NY among others. Her upcoming shows include the Kunstmuseum Bochum, the Skulpturenmuseum in Marl, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, the  Ludwig Museum. In March 2016 she is invited for a residency at Revolver Galeria in Lima, Peru.