On 25th september at 6 p.m. the Foto-Medium-Art Gallery in Kraków will host the opening of the exhibition of Kinga Dunikowska. The exhibition, entitled Behind the Mirror, shows works of art inspirited by pop-culture and advertising. The artist is inviting for cooperation and is applying to gallery’s visitors for bringing along colour magazines, which will become part of an installation – Humpty Dumpty (2008). You can also bring the magazines before and after the opening, during the opening hours.

Kinga Dunikowska’s pursuits concentrate around the problems connected with popular culture. The artist uses the language of advertising and film, she juggles with motives taken from her surroundings, combines them with motives from fairy tales, legends or mythology. Her artistic method is far from an overt criticism of the used themes. Dunikowska balances between fiction and irony. Using the strategies familiar from mass media, her works tempt and delude with the deliberate superficial sham. The artist like a fortune-teller or a witch – you do not know if good or bad – ironically comments on the manipulative systems exploited by the very media (and not only). Such was the character of Bond’s Office (2000). The artist arranged the headquarters of the famous Agent 007 in a typical office. Surrounded by furniture in the style from the 70s, there were objects inseparably associated with the film hero – martini glasses, a shaker, photographs of his many lovers and, of course, a portrait of Her Majesty the Queen. In another of her works, Baby, you can drive my car (2001) she presents onomatopoeic phrases originating from comic strips, T-shirts with inscriptions promising originality and fame that surround a scale model of the Borgward Isabella car from which you could hear the sounds of the well-known Beatles’ hit song. Another time, it was a children’s toy that became the starting point and a part of the installation Magic Garden (2000). The artist equipped a small green-house with a plastic and paper garden, which reflects our artificial world that keeps changing faster and faster. In her latest works she embroiders with sequins texts and symbols on advertisements borrowed from fashion magazines. In this way she perversely comments on the promoted image of a perfect man, perfectly organized, and ideally functioning in the consumerist system. Large banners, as if advertisements, covered with sequins and moving with the flow of air are a similar series of her works. The color difference between the sequins and the background reveals hidden inscriptions – slogans tempting the viewers’ eyes like “…and maybe I’ll love you”, or “Bigger than life”.

Kinga Dunikowska was born in 1974. In 1994 she started studying history of art, philosophy and English philology at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Bonn. From 1995 to 2001 she studied at the Kunstakademie Münster in the studio of Reiner Ruthenbeck and Katharina Fritsch. Her work covers drawing, sculpture, installation, artistic film. She lives and works in Berlin and Cracow.
Kinga Dunikowska’s realizations were presented during individual exhibitions, e.g. Magic Garden, Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg, 2001; The Temple of Ra – or The Eyes of Dr.T. J. Eckleburg, Wewerka Pavillon, Münster, 2001; Happy End, Kunstverein Gelsenkirchen, Gelsenkirchen, 2002; ...a rose is..., Potocka Gallery, Cracow, 2002; Kinga Dunikowska, brot.undspiele galerie Berlin, 2005; and group exhibitions, e.g. Chat, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, 2002; A Breeze of Fortune, Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, 2002; Privatgrün, Koln, 2004; Affinités électives, Centre d’art Contemporain – Cimaise et Portique, Albi, 2004; Installation_Photo, brot.undspiele galerie, Berlin, 2005; 30th Anniversary Show, Foto-Medium-Art Gallery, Cracow, 2007.

The exhibition will be open to public until 30th October 2008.

Please visit our website at
http://foto-medium-art.com/press/kinga-dunikowska-behind-the-mirror/download/