Grzegorz Klaman

Burying Books was a planned, deliberate action, inspired by Granary Island – a kind of no man’s land in a country without public space. Klaman called Granary Island ‘ex-territorial’ – a kind of space beyond the jurisdiction of power and ideology. However, he did not carry out archaeological excavations or grew nostalgic for the traces of history. Klaman inverted the archaeological activity – instead of discovering, he buried, disturbing the chronology of the layers.

Both the gesture of burying books and the accompanying Inverted Archaeology artistic manifesto seem to be crucial for Klaman’s 1980s art, but also influence his later practice – different in form and created in a completely different political and artistic and institutional context. The point is not to know for sure what happened in the past and how the past can be depicted, but to know how to disrupt the order of things, infuse them with meaning and insert oneself there without becoming history’s hostage.

Line of Fire is a work that – alongside Burying Books and his activities on the city’s modern-day fortifications – clearly indicates Klaman’s fascination with land art. It is motivated by the need to react to the abandoned, but architecturally and historically valuable spaces in Gdańsk and stems from the act of discovering new, non-institutional spaces for art, testing the limits of what is possible in the absence of conditions for unrestricted action within the public space.

Klaman’s explorations sought to address the question of space in a way that would go beyond the dominant environmental aesthetics of the time. The northern part of Granary Island, today built up with residential buildings and hotels, was a gaping wound since the end of WWII, and the dramatic remains of the burnt granaries provided the backdrop to Klaman’s activities. The latter, not unlike projects carried out together with Kazimierz Kowalczyk on the modern-day fortifications in Gdańsk (drawings in the snow, drawings made of planks), were unlike anything else created in Poland at that time.

The work was created on Granary Island located on the Motława River, in the centre of Gdańsk, where in the second half of the 1980s and the first years of the following decade, Klaman ran the open-air Wyspa Gallery. Man Carrying a Turtle is the last in a series of figurative wooden sculptures made by the artist in 1985–1989. These sculptures, sometimes embedded directly on the Island in the ruins of former granaries, were a form of intervention in the neglected and forgotten part of the city. Such interventions were characteristic of Klaman’s work in the 1980s. The historical context in which they were created influenced their brutal aesthetics, reminiscent of skinning the body. Klaman’s new-expressionist sculptures symbolically reflect the position of an individual confronting martial law, which dramatic events were felt particularly strong in Gdańsk.

In many of his works, Grzegorz Klaman refers to the current changes to employment regulations, the erosion of the myth of Solidarity and alternative historical narratives. It deals with the effects of the Polish transformation, the pros and cons of modernization, economic exclusion and various ideas regarding the future of post-industrial regions.

In Solidarity Guerilla, the artist tells a story about a hypothetical anarchist quasi-terrorist organization that could arise in Silesia as a result of a rebellion against the methods of privatization of large industry, restructuring and closing down mines, and finally the way in which the entire area – workplaces and post-industrial cities – was destroyed. Klaman creates a vision of a revolt that might arise in the coming years. He derived his idea from observing current events in Silesia, supported by the memory of the experiences of Great Britain, where, as a result of Margaret Thatcher's actions in 1985, nearly two hundred and thirty thousand miners lost their jobs, one hundred and sixty coal mines were closed down, and the rest were privatized.

In many of his works, Grzegorz Klaman refers to the current changes to employment regulations, the erosion of the myth of Solidarity and alternative historical narratives. It deals with the effects of the Polish transformation, the pros and cons of modernization, economic exclusion and various ideas regarding the future of post-industrial regions.

In Solidarity Guerilla, the artist tells a story about a hypothetical anarchist quasi-terrorist organization that could arise in Silesia as a result of a rebellion against the methods of privatization of large industry, restructuring and closing down mines, and finally the way in which the entire area – workplaces and post-industrial cities – was destroyed. Klaman creates a vision of a revolt that might arise in the coming years. He derived his idea from observing current events in Silesia, supported by the memory of the experiences of Great Britain, where, as a result of Margaret Thatcher's actions in 1985, nearly two hundred and thirty thousand miners lost their jobs, one hundred and sixty coal mines were closed down, and the rest were privatized.