Robert Kuśmirowski

He creates a dummy version of reality in which all the elements have a trompe l’oeil feel to them. In a sense Ku´smirowsk collects history, the iconography of certain events, places or periods. By carefully copying and reproducing everything, he refers to both the aspect of time as well as the finiteness of things.

For his solo exhibition at the Van Abbemuseum he has produced, among others, a new version of the installation Double V. This space represents his own imaginary artist’s studio, or how such a space must have looked during the Polish People’s Republic. The artist, however, is too young to have experienced this himself. He draws attention to an artistic Utopia and reactivates a souvenir space, an image from a collective memory with an almost absurd nostalgic feel to it. After a first general impression of the work, the illusionist details, falsifications and simulations become visible. What is the artist trying to tell us? Is there a dual reality lurking behind this large-scale recreation?

In November and December 2004 Kuśmirowksi walked from Warsaw to Paris. The project and the accompanying photo documentation are a reference, among others, to stories told by artists like Constantin Brancusi, who travelled on foot from Bucharest to Paris in 1904.
Kuśmirowksi took on a similar undertaking, experiencing the heavy physical conditions of the hike and writing his own personal account, positioning himself in a time curve between past, present and future.
The artist constructs his own personal world. It is a world that fascinates because of its fragility and poses questions about the intimate nature of small events. At the same time he historicises objects, stories and events as well as playing with the chronological order of things.