While the exhibition Agnieszka Polska: Love Bite is currently suspended due to the Museum's closure, we invite you to view selected video works from the exhibition online. We are grateful to the artist for generously allowing us to share her content digitally under these unusual circumstances!
These videos are an animated diptych centered on the figure of a childlike sun who is a helpless witness to ethical and environmental collapse on Earth. The two-part installation was inspired by the poem Co słonko widziało (What the sun has seen) by the Polish writer Maria Konopnicka (1842– 1910), a children’s story that depicts the harmonious daily routines of modest rural life as if seen from above by the sun. In What the Sun Has Seen, the sun addresses a listener reminiscent of the solitary figure pictured in Caspar David Friedrich’s iconic work of German Romanticism Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818), but in contrast to the sprawling natural landscape of Friedrich’s composition, here the sun observes the vast quantity of “information waste,” or unnecessary and useless data, that clutters the internet and our minds. In The New Sun, the sun character delivers a moody, half-sung monologue addressed to its beloved (effectively the viewer), presenting a vision of a collapsing world in which the only immutable elements are words and language.
Please note that these videos contain explicit content that may not be suitable for all ages; viewer discretion is advised.
What the Sun Has Seen, 2017
Digital video (color, sound); 7:16 min.
Vocal track: Aaron Ronelle Harrell
Courtesy of the artist and Overduin & Co., Los Angeles
The New Sun, 2017
Digital video (color, sound); 12:19 min.
Vocal track: Aaron Ronelle Harrell
Courtesy of the artist and Overduin & Co., Los Angeles