residencies for visual artists
project curators: Mika Drozdowska, Marzena Krzemińska-Baluch, Joanna Stembalska
residency: September 2018
exhibition and outdoor installation: February 2019
Studio & SIC! BWA Wrocław Galleries, Art Academy’ studios, Poland
Since 2013, BWA Wrocław, as a part of the OUT OF STH Urban Art Biennale, has been developing a program of bilateral residencies for visual artists, offering them an opportunity for a creative stay abroad. The residency of Ben Wright is organized in cooperation with the Eugeniusz Geppert Art Academy in Wrocław. The American artist is working and living at the BWA Wrocław galleries (Studio and SiC!) and the Art Academy studios.
Ben Wright arrived in Wrocław in September at the invitation of project curators – Joanna Stembalska and Dominika Drozdowska (BWA Wrocław) and Marzena Krzemińska-Baluch (Art Academy in Wrocław). Wright is one of the most progressive artists working with glass, as well as a curator and education director at Urban Glass in New York.
Vivisection is Ben Wright’s format of work. It is a form of an overloaded site-specific installation, mirroring an overwhelming immensity of loosely connected emotions, ideas, questions. The work engages all senses, leading to an information overload. It is Wright’s deliberate strategy – he believes that it provides a chance to shorten the way to experience or to reflect on a work of art. „Vivisection” means literally cutting out a piece of the brain or live tissue. In this case, the artist himself becomes the subject of vivisection. During his residency in Poland, Ben Wright will reveal another „part of the brain”, much different from previous versions of the project. It will be a result of a time and space dislocation, connected additionally with an immersion in Polish culture and his own American origin. The final result of the installation will be a combination of the impact that people, places, ideas, history, the culture of the city and the region will make on the author.
Organizers: BWA Wrocław, Art Academy in Wrocław
In 2018, project curators Dominika Drozdowska and Joanna Stembalska have received a medal of special merit from the President of Wrocław Rafał Dutkiewicz and Director of the European Capital of Culture – Krzysztof Maj for their activity in the field of building space for international art exchange.
