DIANA LELONEK

Zoe-therapy (in process)

Diana Lelonek’s exhibition presents unseen works from the ongoing project Zoe-therapy, shown for the first time at CCA Ujazdowski Castle (Warsaw) in 2015.

„The project (…) can be treated as a shock therapy of a kind, but also as a sophisticated act of vengeance. It is a Vendetta carried out with biological weapons, systematically and with scientific precision. The battle is fought with colonies of microbes: fungi and bacteria. The enemies seem tangible: some of them are looking at as from portraits published on the pages of Władysław Tatarkiewicz's ”Encyclopaedia of Philosophy”. However, these black and white representations of classical philosophers, authors of fundamental works within European humanistic thought, are only a substitute of the real target. The images symbolise the actual object of the attack: the extremely complex philosophical, anthropocentric and hierarchical vision of human history, as well as the dualist concept of a world divided into the allegedly wonderful culture and the idyllic nature, the powerful human beings and organisms inferior to them, the wretched body and the perfect spirit, the good familiar things and the bad alien ones.

Lelonek is taking her own laboratory into the gallery space, where she tests different kinds of parasitism of microorganisms on the products of European civilization. Until now, territorial expansion and subjugation of weaker (understood as inferior) species was a characteristic typical only and exclusively of Western society and culture, and specifically - as the artist points out - white and wealthy Europeans. This time the tables have turned. What was suppressed and denied can finally take revenge, at least metaphorically.”

(Marcin Krasny, from the catalogue „Zoe-therapy”, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, 2015)Project in collaboration with Jas Garstka.

Hoene-Wroński, 2015Archive print, molds and bacteria conserved in resin, 24x30 cm

Auguste Comte parasitized by Geotrichum candidum, 2015, 85x60 cm

Józef Hoene-Wroński parasitized by Aspergillus niger, Scedosporium apiospermum, 2015, 85x60 cm

George Berkeley parasitized by Geotrichum candidum, Aspergillus, 2015, 100x70 cm

Arystoteles parasitized by Scedosporium apiospermum, 2015, 150x100 cm

Socrates parasitized by Scedosporium apiospermum, 2015, 30x20 cm

Academy parasitized by different kind of molds and bacteria, 2017, 40x50 cm

Acropolis parasitized by different kind of molds and bacteria, 2015, 92x150 cm

Diana Lelonek

Born in 1988 in Poland. Lives and works in Poznan.

www.dianalelonek.tumblr.com

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2017 Zoe-Therapy (in process), Rodriguez Gallery, Poznań2016 Center for the living things, ROD, Warsaw2015 Yesterday I met a really wild man, Lookout Gallery, Warsaw2015 Zoe-Therapy, Center of the Contemporary Art – Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw2014 There is nothing there, anyway, (with Marek Kucharski), Greenroom Gallery, Photomonth Festival, Cracow 2014 Long Before, Lookout Gallery, Warsaw

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2016 Proces trwa - programowanie w wymiarze rzeczywistości, Różnia Gallery, Warsaw 2016 Bones of all man, Center of Contemporary Art in Toruń2016 PhotoPoland, Tibilisi Photo Festival, Tibilisi, Georgia2016 PhotoPoland, Festival Les Recontres d’ Arles, Arles, France2016 Returning to Białowieża, Arsenal Gallery in Bialystok2016 ReGeneration 3, Format Festival, Quad Gallery, Derby, UK2015 ReGeneration 3, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico2015 The increased diffculty of concentration, City Surfers, Prague2015 The laboratory of photogaphy, International Biennale of Photography in Poznań2015 ReGeneration 3, Le Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland2014 After the rain, Szara Gellery, Cieszyn2013 Unobvious, International Biennale of Photography in Poznań2013 2m2 of fashion, Lookout Gallery, Warsaw2012 Young Art Show, Piestany, Slovakia2012 Sententia, Corner House, Nottingham, UK2011 Of/course, Off Foto Festival, Bratislava, Slovakia

www.rodriguezgallery.com

Phot. Tobiasz Jankowiak