42.00 x 59.00 cm - crayons, pencil, paper
, signed on p.d.: Zbigniew Libera | 1998
At the turn of 1989/1990 Zbigniew Libera spent six months in Egypt, Sudan and Israel. This trip marked a caesura in the work of the hitherto performer, actionist, creator of video films, only incidentally author of collages based on documentation of these ephemeral forms. Upon his return, he changed his emploi and turned to the object. The long-standing, branching series of works he began at that time is framed by the title of one of its versions - Corrective Devices. Included in this series, in addition to the title, are groups of works such as Aunt Ken (1994), Lego. Concentration Camp (1996), Body Master (1998). In them, the artist investigated the impact that the market, advertising, widespread and easy access to consumer goods could have on the modern man (let's add: in Poland, which, after years of real socialism, was just discovering the charms of capitalism).
By design, these were to be objects made in the aesthetics of persuasion, the artist writes. - Not just aesthetically pleasing to look at, but truly functional in the sense of the impact they have in reality. I was interested in the pressure that objects put on us, how they make us feel. What impact do toys have on children? I wondered how to compromise the functions of objects so familiar to our everyday life. I found that it could be done through a kind of disruption: to build an almost identical, persuasive object, in the same aesthetics and using the same technology, similarly functioning, but nevertheless slightly different, as if genetically modified. The idea was that the applied, internally operating "virus" would dismantle the object's relationship to the field of framing. (Text in cat.: Zbigniew Libera. Works from 1982-2008, Zachęta Gallery, Warsaw 2009, p. 103)
The drawing of Handy Bear can be combined with the series Mutations of Tools and Toy Projects (both 1998), especially the latter, in which the artist juxtaposes the soft and "innocent" shapes of children's toys (rattle, teether, teddy bear) with their hard, technical tooling.
(Pabianice 7 July 1959, lives in Warsaw)
Zbigniew Libera began his studies in 1977 at the seminary of the Pallotine Fathers in Ozarow, then studied from 1978-1980 at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. He did not graduate from any art college. In 1981 he undertook individual activity of an interventionist nature (leaflet printing, painting on walls). In 1982-83 he was imprisoned for opposition activities. In 1983-1986, he was associated with "Zrzuta Kultura" and "Strychem" in Lodz. There he established closer cooperation with Jerzy Truszkowski, with whom he was active in the music and performance group "Sternenhoch" in 1985-1989. In 1988-1990 he worked with Zofia Kulik as a model for her photographic works. He initially developed his individual work in the field of video ("Intimate rites", "Mystical Perseveration", 1984, "How girls are trained", 1987). In the period from 1988 to the mid-1990s, he created drawings, sculptures, installations ("Bathing Man," 1991). Since 1995 he has been designing and making objects parodying products of mass culture ("Aunt Ken," 1995, "Universal Penis Expander," 1995, "Corrective Devices," 1996, "Lego. Concentration Camp," 1996). From 2002 to 2004, he made the photographic series "Positives" - pastiches of hearsay press photographs (generally wojey), whose dramatic pronunciation he changed to a carefree, "positive" one. His work, sometimes drastically touching on contemporary stereotypes and habits, is part of the current of critical art.
