Artful dodgers
The works of the seventeen artists featured in "Manipulations. On Economies of Deceit" emphasize the psychological and cultural divide between truth and fiction. The artists' works use our cultural values and the intellectual mechanisms that govern associations in art, politics, sociology and economics to examine the nature of manipulation as it is understood in both a positive context (seduction) and a negative context (deception).
Johan Grimonprez, Runa Islam, Joanna Malinowska, and Julian Rosefeldt explore the blurred line between fiction and documentary film genres. In Looking for Alfred, Grimonprez examines "how much our current understanding of reality has been filtered by Hollywood's vision" of cult figures like Hitchcock - a man who is defined by the symbolism of the Hitchcock myth - black suit, bowler hat, round gut, smoking cigar, cups of tea, ominous birds and drop-dead beautiful blondes.
Islam's beautiful film, First Day of Spring portrays rickshaw drivers in a Dhaka park, while Rosefeldt's The Soundmaker looks at the art of dubbing, where everyday sounds are manipulated using technology. Malinowska's documentary, meanwhile, recounts the day-to-day life of an Inuit who calls himself the "Arctic Elvis."
Other media are also on display. Jorge Pardo's lamp sculpture disturbs the balance between functionality and decoration, while Micha≥ Budny's 3-D bar graph presents a subjective skyline of data that changes according to how light falls. Zbigniew Libera's collection of fictitious "photo-positive" images and Christian Tomaszewski's fake movie posters further exploit our fascination with film and document, glamour and fact.
The exhibition runs until May 6th at the CSW Ujazdowski Palace on Al. Ujazdowskie 6
