Zofia Kulik – Patterns

The exposition of works will be accompanied by the promotion of a unique publication entitled Patterns, published by Dominik Art Edition

The series of Zofia Kulik's latest works illustrates that the artist has worked out her own variations of already existing designs, taken from various epochs, traditions and cultural environments. She retains the basic structure of each pattern, making her own version of it, usually using the motifs which have appeared in her works before. She uses the textile designs of William Morris, a meticulous stylistics of Arab ornamentation, batik clothing patterns and Chinese floral decoration in the decorative arrangements of Patterns of her own. The artist reconstructs the rhythmical patterns, using the motifs which we know from her earlier works, especially in her symbolic repertoire of the representations from the 1990s. Skulls, decorative draperies, dry leaves, vegetables and flowers, spikes, bullet shells, and sharp endings of banner sticks return in the ornamental configurations of Patterns. Each configuration features the motif of the human figure which is the motif on which the whole Kulik's "grammar of ornamentation" is based and which was polished by the artist in her Archive of Gestures (1987 - 1999) - a set of ca. 700 photographs of a posed male figure. Similar as before, when the artist often used various patterns, interweaving their ornamentation into the narration of her own compositions, she uses her earlier output and her archive in Patterns, transforming the entangled, rhythmical pattern of Patterns into a specific journey to the visual richness of her oeuvre to date. The collection of designs formed like a square resembles a sample book, offered to clients of upholstery, wall-paper and carpeting shops. It is like a set of samples to view and chose the design which one can buy "in metres" in an unlimited amount. The idea of samples is a logical continuation of the artist's collective passion and her archiving mania (in the form of black-and-white photography), together with her classifying of the visual material of both reality and art.

The exposition of works will be accompanied by the promotion of a unique publication entitled Patterns, published by Dominik Art Edition – a publisher house from Krakow, co-operating with Polish top artists. The publication contains a photographic port-folio with Zofia Kulik's works, the print-run is 35 copies, each one numbered and signed. Each portfolio features 9 works, sized 50cm x 50cm on photographic paper, made with the use of "archival pigment print" technique. The exceptionally high editorial level of this publication is the result of, among others, the application of this technique, highly praised by photographic experts, along with the use of baric paper, suited for the pigment print of highest quality. The portfolio was made with special care for all requirements of the archival work, related to editorial projects, thus including such elements as: cotton paper, acid-free cardboard and linen dyed only with natural dyes.

The editorial project Zofia Kulik. Patterns was realised by Dominik Art Edition in co-operation with Le Guern Gallery and a German firm Monochrom.