ARTLAND

In a performative art project taking place at the City Gallery of Gdansk, the artist Iwona Zajac is letting young students transform her. Every third day she also invites an artist to create an installation on one wall of the gallery, in dialogue with her project.

The Ideal Lab is a project Iwona Zajac has been working on since 2008. This time it’s students working in her studio at the Gdansk shipyard, “The Young Crew”, who re-make, re-create and change Zajac into an ideal woman. Or, try out different ideals for women, ideals flooding over media.

In what seems like a never-ending make-over-mania in magazines and TV, you need to change to become a person of significance. The message is easy to understand. I thought it was an April fools' joke when I read that a handbook “All you need to know about surgical operations” was published in Sweden. Such an everyday title. Could have been “All your need to know about Italian cooking” or “All you need to know about travelling in Spain”.

I come to think about the video “Doll-clothes” from 1975 where Cindy Sherman dresses herself up in different clothes, in a paper cut-out-doll-manner. She gets out of her flat plastic pocket in an album and realizes, like Eva, that she is naked.  After picking a dress she dances around on a chest of drawers, when large hands seize her and put her back into the album again. Watch technique from the beginning of the video-technique-era for artists, still of present interest:  http://vodpod.com/watch/1092523-cindy-sherman-doll-clothes-1975

Gdansk Galeria Miejska is open a few days more for this project, until April 8. Here you can also cuddle up in a small dark video-room with wall-paintings.

If you are not in Gdansk this last week of the project, you can see a permanent work of hers - one of Zajac' murals can be seen during a visit at the Contemporary Art Centre Laznia. In the staircase on the highest floor you can even meet her in a self-portrait, or is it maybe her own mother? You can’t be sure since the mural is about the relation between herself and her mother. Still, one white spot on the murals remains, but the work is soon to be finished Zajac and curator Agnieszka Wolodzko says.

When wandering along the Motlawa River, leaving the old city and walking towards the contemporary art centre Laznia in lower town, you will bump into an unusual sight. A long truck is stuck under a bridge. It looks like someone took a chance to drive the truck fast to make it out on the other side, but failed badly since the bridge is too low.

The truck is part of the Outdoor gallery of CCA Laznia. Laznia itself works in a former bathhouse which was transformed into a vibrant art scene in Gdansk. Lex Rijkers and Daniel Milohnic are the creators of Auto Art.  The active pedagogical department of Laznia runs workshops inside the truck and also outdoor in the area. You can see traces of the project on the pavement, other pedestrian areas, on small houses and fences in the neighborhood.  Artists run workshops in different forms and media, like visual art, theatre, sound, music, dance and street games. People are invited to take part of creation and the place evokes hope of that anything can happen here in this run-down area.

Dark November and December hosts many opportunities to see art if you are in Gdansk.

At CCA Laznia you can see the installations of South Korean artist Kyungwoo Chun. One thousand residents of Gdansk have shared their thoughts on how the Solidarity movement affected their lives. You can see the paintings of Katarzyna Swinarska in her exhibition Family Relations. References to old iconic paintings and pictures from today’s’ media are mixed into reflections on the role of women.  Rosa van Hofwegen has made a scenic and staged ode to deceased mothers with displays of collected memories from many mothers in her exhibition Loss of Sorrow .

Marek Radke shows a spatial and geometric installation at the new Gdansk City Gallery No 1 in the very city centre. In a spirit of a more humorous constructivism his objects reflects ultraviolet rays in different manners and makes you a bit lost in space.  On the backyard of Gdansk City Gallery, on the wall of the old cinema Neptun, there are more surprises for the curious. A monumental wall painting is made by Mariusz Waras and Gionata Gesi. "Last movie" is a bombastic painting above an older mosaic-wall and your eyes wander along between Michelangelo's  Last Judgment, Mickey Mouse and film-history in a mural that really takes over this secret place. Machines and technical spare-parts to something unknown, deconstructed, is a counterpart to all building sites in Gdansk.

At Wyspa Institute of contemporary art in the famous shipyard there is an exhibition called Re-designing the East, on political design. And, if you are there on Friday there is a special house-warming party in their winter cold space.

The Narration-festival using forgotten and neglected locations in the city is however over for this year.

Since the city of Gdansk is a champion to be the Cultural capital 2016 it is great that they are warming up both the art scene and the winter. See you soon!