Opening times: 16:00 - 20:00
Official opening: 13.11.2020 / 18:00
For the November edition of Windows 2020. New Phenomena, Magdalena Kirklewska and Ksawery Kirklewski are going to prepare a spatial installation inside the LKW Gallery titled „Smile, please”.
In the artists’ own words:
Depression affects 350 million people each year, making it one of the most widespread diseases around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic, social isolation, political and economic crisis all have a destructive influence on our mental health. According to the latest research published by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH), the number of people with depression symptoms in the USA has increased from 8.5% before the pandemic to 27.8% in April 2020. This increase – the numbers grew more than threefold – is the effect of stressors associated with the pandemic, most notably financial problems. The pandemic wave of depression will most likely also hit Poland.
Poland is among the leading European countries in terms of the share of people suffering from depression among the population (5.1% in 2017 according to WHO), with more than 5,000 Poles committing suicide each year. Depression is a widespread problem that affects people from various age and social groups. Nevertheless, depression patients are stigmatised and discriminated against in the Polish society, as a result of harmful stereotypes that still exist about mental illnesses. Persons experiencing such reactions are more reluctant to reveal their illness, less frequently seek support and more often resign from pursuing necessary treatment. Depression doesn’t always have the face of a person sunk in grief, hiding away from the world. Those affected often maintain the semblance of normal functioning, hiding their condition beneath a smile, while their illness goes unnoticed by those around them. Overcoming the tabooisation of depression and mutual empathy might help us survive these generally very difficult times.
MAGDALENA KIRKLEWSKA (borh 1990) is a graduate of the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. She graduated with honours in 2015. In her painting, she focuses on the image of the body in the context of social and cultural patterns. In 2019, she received a mention of honour in the 2019 Eibisch Award, Katarzyna Napiórkowska Art Gallery, Warsaw. In 2020, she presented her works at solo exhibitions, e.g. Images of Bodies, Żak Gallery, Venus and Adonis, WL4 – Mleczny Piotr, and Magdalena Kirklewska – Let’s Hang Artists Every Day at the Artists’ Colony in Gdańsk. She lives and works in Gdańsk.
KSAWERY KIRKLEWSKI (born in 1988) is a graphic designer, animator and programmer, graduate of the Faculty of Graphic Arts of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. His graduation work Banner Exhibition, presented in 2015, received the Award of the Minister of Culture in the Design 32. The best Works from the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice 2015. He creates public artworks, live visualisations and music videos. In his work, he relies on new technologies, programming, advertising media, and old RTV equipment. He is the cofounder of Fundacja(x), working with the broadly understood new media art and its popularisation (for instance by organising the AVX – Audio Video Experyment microfestival). He lives in Gdańsk’s Dolne Miasto.
www.ksawerykomputery.pl
www.instagram.com/ksawerykomputery
Windows 2020. New Phenomena – concept of the series
A SERIES OF EXHIBITIONS IN THE PUBLIC SPACE / LKW GALLERY
Climate marches, wildfires, melting glaciers, animal species going extinct, mutating viruses and life under lockdown, plus the ongoing threat of terrorism, fear of strangers and recurring nationalist tendencies… One could say that we’re living in “interesting times”, when dystopian visions become reality. In order to survive, on the one hand, we tend to go in denial, gradually adapt to the situation, escape into cyberspace and dream about flying to Mars, and on the other, we feel a growing personal rebellion and fear at what’s still to come, and try to make a change.
The LKW Gallery space will act as a window where you’ll be able to look from the outside at sculptures, installations, interventions, video works and performances – but it will also serve as a broadcasting studio for artistic actions.
Using any medium they choose, each of the invited artists will prepare their own show, with the audience being composed of both art consumers and accidental passers-by.