MICHAL
MARTYCHOWIEC

In Memory

Particolare – ‘detail’, ‘singularity’, or, as an adjective, ‘specific’ – signifies what is individual, separate and exceptional and is used in his contextualising dialogue by Giovanni Anselmo in the early 70s. The word ‘particolare’ becomes a gesture, a signifier, a pointer – creator of new contexts and the new seeing-understanding.

In Memory brings past and present closer to one another, whilst maintaining the dynamic balance between spaces and, most importantly, between the seen and the imagined. The pictures of ‘fragments of time’ (photographs of our environment represented by pure colour) recorded on the photographic film are not about a mimetic representation, but about re-presentation created by our imagination.Following this thought-frame, it might appear that In Memory creates contexts, which depend on the audience rather than the space. Moreover, the work does not provide one with a ‘particular’ signifier or form, but colour connected to some kind of primaeval memory – and so catalyst in the creation of feelings. These abstracted photographs, deprived of signifiers, make us signify – the appearing and disappearing contexts as we move through space. A projection at the wall is not pointing at the wall, but rather at us looking at the wall and thinking-feeling.

However, the work is more about oblivion than about recollecting or remembering, even though the title might appear at first deceptive. Despite not being noticeable during one brief visit, the slides’ material quality sets a parallel which shadows the already drawn framework. For the photographic film exposed to light continuously changes its colour and fades. As time passes, to which both spectator and the work are subjected, the act of interpretation, as emotional as it might in this case be, cannot be completed but has to be continuously committed to co-constitute changing conditions of both the spectator and the work of art. Of course, this ongoing act can only take place throughout the limited timeframe of, in case of the spectator, his/her lifetime, and in case of the work of art, its lifetime, which in this case is the duration of the exhibition.

By the end of the exhibition, the colour of the slides fades, so there is hardly any of it left. In Memory, if thinking of the title again, is a somewhat a memorial to art, a sacrifice in the memory of it. The work of art is no more by the time it could have been collected. What remains is history.