Magdalena Dukiewicz: Elements of Perturbation

Curated by Jamie Martinez at The Border Gallery

June 12 – July 11th, 2020

The Border is pleased to present Elements of Perturbation, a solo exhibition by Magdalena Dukiewicz curated by Jamie Martinez from June 12th – July 11th, 2020. 

 Dukiewicz interprets and co-opts mathematical theory by connecting it to life itself, considering how expectations of our idealized future seldom come into fruition as planned, resulting in necessary alterations and adaptations to cater to reality. Responding to the pandemic, she re-contextualized her piece In Every Dream Home a Heartache into a post-apocalyptic setting: transforming the floor into a lifeless, arid landscape. Confronting the pending feeling of hopelessness, she provides a space that instigates a moment of rumination—an individual and collective reflection—for the human species to “regroup, rethink and adjust to a new reality.”

The house, made out of a bio-textile cover, fabricated with hydrolyzed collagen and vegetable glycerin, natural pigments, and the artist’s blood, are all interconnected and interlinked to represent a “non-place—a space of transience” (referring to Marc Augé). The symbolic nature of the house also alludes to the artist’s childhood, when she would be “playing house,” which had engrained the restricting social roles that were expected from her at an early age, acting as a source of anxiety and discomfort. The yellow light radiating from the house is welcoming but also concurrently hostile. The dichotomy of a semblance of safety and an eventual cataclysmic collapse is embedded within the piece, bringing forth contemplations and re-evaluates notions of security.

Magdalena Dukiewicz invites you, the viewer, to lay down and underneath the house, to ground your senses, and to fully immerse yourself into a meditative state—to consider how you must rebuild your home to reflect and respond to your ever-evolving reality.

Born in 1982 in Warsaw, Poland Magdalena Dukiewicz is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. With a multidisciplinary approach that is often site-specific, Dukiewicz’s practice is mostly process-based with a combination of material experimentation and method. Her work revolves around the binomial of art-science and interactive art. 

Dukiewicz solo exhibit In Every Dream Home a Heartache was presented at Stand4 Gallery in Brooklyn in March. Her installations were selected for the inaugural show at BioBAT Art Space in New York (2019) and SciArt Center exhibition at UsagiNY Gallery in Dumbo, NY (2019). She was featured during Berlin Art and Science Week (2018) and Work in Progress exhibition in Camden Art Centre in London (2019). Dukiewicz is a recipient of the Nessa Cohen Grant for Sculpture and a grant from the Polish Minister of Culture and Heritage. She was a resident at the studio of Carlos Amorales in Mexico City (2017) and at the Bio Art Residency at SVA NYC in 2018