FLICKR ARTISTS - ROBERT BĘZA - COLLAGES

6 DECEMBER 2011, 7:30 P.M.

Come to Nizio Gallery:

to see Robert Bęza’s collages made from post stamps issued during the communist era that bring back memories of children’s stamp album collections, but the unrealistic world they present here in condensed form and made up from a plethora of elements put together was frequently passed unnoticed.
The memories of the 1980s, the last decade of the communist-era childhood, are those of collecting everything colourful. What poses a serious problem today – food products packaging that spills out from overfilled recyclable waste containers – once used to be treasured and displayed in a prominent place of the children’s room or the living room.

Although post stamps collected by children in stamp albums at the time were a form of visual propaganda – they presented historical figures, places, events, technological advancements of the communist states – for children they were trophies as valuable as a Coca-Cola can or a “windowed German chocolate packaging". Building collections of colourful objects was a kind of building relations with the world and had its social function.

Another look at the stamps stored in my room brought out their surrealistic motifs. Mushrooms with strange names and anthropomorphic shapes, abstract representations of architecture, perspective errors in reproducing wrestling fight scenes, portraits of anxiously distorted faces, astronauts in conventional outer space... make up a picture of the mythological world of absurd realism.
The show closes on 6 January – the International Stamp Day.

Candelaria Saenz Valiente of the ParisTetris band will perform at the opening.

Robert Bęza (born in 1977) – does video-collage, video clip, photography, graphic design, and VJing. Has worked closely with sound artist Miya Masaoka – visualisations for the concert being part of the A.I.R. Laboratory project. Author of the visual setting of the finale concert of the 6th Warsaw Festival "Innocent Charmers". Permanently collaborates with the ParisTetis band as a VJ, video performer. The series of collages shown as part of the Flickr Artists project to date has only been displayed in the web.

The Flickr Artists cycle was launched in February of 2011 with the show of works by Łukasz Wierzbowski at Nizio Gallery.

Cycle and show curator: Paulina Jeziorek

Media Patrons:
Radio Kampus www.radiokampus.waw.pl
Independent- Polska Kultura Niezależna www.independent.pl
Informator Kulturalny Co Jest Grane www.cojestgrane.pl
Radio Roxy: www.roxy.tuba.pl

Financial support provided by:
Copy General www.copygeneral.pl/pl/home/