Karol Radziszewski. Myths at BWA Warsaw
Karol Radziszewski reads and then paints the life and work of musical genius – Karol Szymanowski, weaving a tale about him in the form of a dense painterly masquerade.
In the world of the composer’s myths Radziszewski sees his home village of Tymoszówka and grand pianos drowned in the nearby bond, a broken reed and broken hearts of young men. Italy, the place of queer archaeologies and sudden coming outs. Of Narcissus and Pan. The Tatras in nature and in highlanders. The Tatras in operas and in ballet masters. Dreams and awakenings. Radziszewski re-creates Szymanowski’s universe with his signature selectivity and imagination.
The artist takes an interest in the nocturnality of the story, understatements and mysteries, mirages of memories. He plays with the historical portrait genre, demonstrating its arbitrariness, tendency towards fabrication and mythologisation. Karol Radziszewski constructs a fascinating anti-monument composed of a biography that consists of music and the body.
As in the composer’s opera King Roger, the encounter with Karol Szymanowski is an encounter with a mystery: with a figure that emerges from darkness, with oneself as the other, restrained by the social corset. Held captive in the sleeping mountain and in the melody of grand pianos from the bottom of the lake, which can only be heard in dreams.
Place/ BWA Warsaw
ft/ Kate Zaniewska
