Work on this text has started from my curatorial collaboration on the project entitled Possible Construction_Encounter that was part of Bożenna Biskupska’s one-artist exhibition at the Four Domes Pavilion – Museum of Contemporary Art, branch of the National Museum in Wrocław. Reflecting on the project’s conception, talking to the artist, visiting her studio, and analyzing her entire oeuvre, all this has inspired an interpretive perspective on her art extending far beyond the project that was then in progress. The project’s certain features, integral and interconnected: its nomadic nature, temporality, processuality, ephemerality, fluidity, transience, and the ontological and aesthetic category of possibility rooted in all of the above, may be regarded as essential to Biskupska’s approach. They also suggest a new interpretive perspective on her entire oeuvre and its underlying ideas. The approach manifested in the set of attributes listed above also informs many of her other works and projects and consequently applying this perspective may also provide new insights that in turn illuminate the diversity of forms assumed by her art.

At first glance, this idea may seem outrageous as the majority of Biskupska’s works – although some may be categorized as time-based art – are realized in forms traditionally associated with the opposite qualities: permanency, durability, solidity, constancy. But, in many pieces that seem resolutely definite and permanent, there is an element of temporality and transience.

Let’s start with the Possible Construction_Encounter installation as its conception and underlying premises illuminate the artist’s entire oeuvre and may guide its interpretation. Designed specifically for display at the Immersion Room at the Four Domes Pavilion, Possible Construction_Encounter installation is a complex, multi-layer, and multidimensional work. On the one hand it references the artist’s biography and her many projects aimed at creating special places to serve some particular purpose, most often spaces for art, and on the other relates to her monumental exhibition presented at the Four Domes Pavilion from 10 March to 9 June 2024. In particular, the installation refers to the idea she has honed for many years to establish an art institution – the Laboratory of Culture – at the former sanatorium of Dr Hermann Brehmer at Sokołowsko.

The Laboratory of Culture has been established by the Contemporary Art Foundation In Situ founded by Bożenna Biskupska, Zygmunt Rytka, and Zuzanna Fogtt in 2004. Today, the foundation is headed by Bożenna Biskupska and Zuzanna Fogtt. While the entire Laboratory of Culture provides an important framework of reference for the present exhibition, the Museum Under Construction, one of its many projects, seems particularly significant in the exhibition’s context. It envisions establishing in the former Brehmer Sanatorium building multiple special spaces, each one dedicated to a particular artist. The first one has already been set up: Józef Robakowski’s Cabinet of Energetic Angles and another one – dedicated to Stanisław Dróżdż – is forthcoming. There are plans for more spaces dedicated to artists from all over the world whose works will be presented alongside pieces by Biskupska.

The Museum Under Construction is a project-in-progress abut also a space that is possible. Possibility is a very important aesthetic aspect not only of this particular project but also of Biskupska’s art in general. Those commenting on her work often – and correctly – point to its temporal aspect which assumes multiple forms. But possibility is something different from temporality. Temporality emphasizes processuality, volatility, progress and narration, while possibility points to condensed energy, entropy, multidirectional infinity, potentiality, and freedom. Thus construed possibility is not situated in the future, although it specifically opens up towards the future, but rather enfolds in the eternal ‘now’, the present of the idea.

Creating the physical and symbolic space(s) for communal practicing and experiencing art, thus conceived Museum Under Construction is also a venue for encounters, first of all of the art of Bożenna Biskupska with works of the invited artists. The encounters of works informed by various and different artistic programmes, ideas, and aesthetics. What connects them are the radical, uncompromising approaches of their makers. The framework for artistic encounters is constructed by other kinds of meetings organized here that define the character of the place. The Gothic Revival architecture of the former Brehmer Sanatorium is likewise an encounter of various epochs in the history of architecture and an active participant in various histories enfolding there. The sanatorium provides a fitting venue for opposite but related processes of death and recovery. Turned into a museum, the sanatorium encloses all these processes – like artworks – in the space of memory while opening up to various expectations and functions.

There is a reason for discussing the Museum Under Construction in this context. The Possible Construction_Encounter installation clearly alludes to its conception. It is likewise “under construction” and effects the encounter of the possible structure with the extant building that envelopes it. It is also the encounter of the potentiality of the former with the persistent existence of the latter that has survived many threats. It is also the encounter of the two structures’ respective histories, different and yet converging within the shared framework of political history of shifting state borders and what this shifting does to cultural borders. The latter are left behind, still marked in the space abandoned by the former. No longer do they defend the territory against new forms and cultural discourses but open and let the new merge with the old. Multifarious processes interpenetrate to create the space of hybrid and transnational culture and – as a result – the transcultural universe.

The installation is also about the encounter of the three artists involved in its creation: in the space defined by the installation, dialogue enfolds between the physical object constructed by Bożenna Biskupska of scaffolding modules and the streaming of digital images designed by Laura Adel and Bartosz Radzikowski. In contrast to the Museum Under Construction, the works of the three participating artists are situated within the same space, not in separate designated places. While encounter and dialogue is central to both the Museum Under Construction project and the Possible Construction installation, these ideas are approached differently. In the Museum Under Construction, the participating artists retain their individual autonomy, their works displayed in separate physical spaces and united in discursive dialogue in symbolical space. In the Possible Construction installation, three different approaches and creative processes are integrated and materialize to create a single, collaborative work.

The encounters and dialogues within the installation’s space enfold not only between the physical structure erected by Bożenna Biskupska of scaffolding modules and the streaming of digitally projected images but also between the images. While Laura Adel uses organic forms, mostly monochromatic, in black and white, Bartosz Radzikowski is interested in the conception of background noise, uses geometric forms and explores colour symbolism and chromatic effects. In the installation that has come into being through the collaborative effort of the three artists, the idea of possibility is realized through fusing different aesthetics into a coherent statement. But within the collective framework, individual voicesremain distinctive. Intervening into the physical space of Biskupska’s construction, Adel and Radzikowski simultaneously aim at integrating their respective works into the structure of the whole while preserving their autonomy and identity. The installation’s hybrid nature thus becomes its essential, defining feature.

In terms of its conception and form, the Possible Construction_Encounter installation belongs in Biskupska’s extensive and multi-faceted creative activity, particularly her efforts to create places. Paradoxically, the structure under construction is being replaced by the scaffolding constructed to build it. This paradox illuminates and expresses the symbolical dimension of the concept of potentiality. The scaffolding’s modularity, which makes it easy to dismantle and put up again somewhere else, gives Biskupska’s construction another important aspect: mobility. It is a nomadic structure, it follows the artist wherever she goes, becoming the form of her art and her existence.

Still, the proposed idea to regard the Possible Construction with its constitutive features and properties as providing an interpretive key – one of many possible – to Biskupska’s oeuvre requires further justification. So, I will review the scholarly and critical texts on her art in search of interpretations corresponding to my proposed perspective. Then, I will analyze select works by the artist to find out whether they possess the above discussed characteristics, common albeit not always manifested in the same way. In the end, I will present – as the conclusion – my proposed perspective on the art of Bożenna Biskupska.

Ryszard W. Kluszczyński

(fragments of the text were published in the publication accompanying the exhibition Bożenna Biskupska. Artist and Possible Construction organized in 2024 in the Four Domes Pavilion – Museum of Contemporary Art a branch of the National Museum in Wrocław)