The floor of the BOK-MCC gallery was marked out with a floor plan. Various porcelain props were placed in the rooms thus created. Their arrangement was not surprising, but the props themselves stirred emotions. The authors of the exhibition entitled “Have Your Way” are Alicja Patanowska and Magdalena Gazur.
Plates were placed in the kitchen, very ingeniously decorated with fragments of Tuwim’s poem “The Alphabet”. An excellent design idea. The decorations made from lines of the poem formed interesting, asymmetrical patterns on the round plates.
In the living room, the artists placed slender urns for the ashes of loved ones, departing from the classical shape. They wrote about their “La Urna” in a mini-catalogue: “We present you with a porcelain urn (…) La Urna is kept at home primarily as a spiritual memento. Thanks to its sculptural form, it enriches the interior in which it is located. (…).”
The bedroom featured a set of porcelain dildos (an artificial penis used for masturbation), decorated with subtle clusters of little roses—a common decorative motif on porcelain tea services.
The designers called the dildo “handy jewelry” and included instructions for using it, for reasons unknown addressing them only to women. Had they been more open and also explained how a man should use the dildo, the provocation would have been considerably stronger.
The generously sized porcelain penises in pale-pink flowers would have suited the decor of the French salons of the Marquis and Madame de Sade. They also attracted quite considerable interest from the public. Their placement in the exhibition somewhat overshadowed Gazur and Patanowska’s other, equally interesting works.
The authors took part in design exhibitions at the “Lódź Dessing Festival 2011” in Łódź, at the Red Net Housing Fair in Wrocław, and at the Domar Interior Gallery exhibition “Domestic Design”.
In the BOK-MCC gallery, their delicate porcelain works were lost in the overly large, glass-enclosed interior. The plates, bowls, porcelain rabbits, slender urns and, finally, the dildos in pastel flowers and patterns would have looked better in authentic interiors than in this particular gallery.
The exhibition of designer porcelain opened the distinguished and traditional Ceramics and Sculpture Open-Air Workshop. Magdalena Gazur addressed this subject at the opening. “Design has a hard time breaking through, especially in cities with such a rich tradition of ceramic sculpture as Bolesławiec,” Gazur said. “I think the porcelain exhibition will make it possible to look at ceramics from a different perspective and at how ceramics can develop.”
Two significant design exhibitions have previously been held in the BOK-MCC gallery. The work of the well-known Polish designer and Bolesławiec native Katarzyna Hałas was presented, as was that of Karina Marusińska, a member of the “łuhuu!” artistic group and the “Wzorowo” design group.
(information: Grażyna Hanaf)