Ewa Doroszenko and Jacek Doroszenko – IMPOSSIBLE HORIZON

The intermedia exhibition by duo Ewa Doroszenko and Jacek Doroszenko consists of a series of photographs, unique photographic objects, a sound installation, and video works, created over the past years as part of Artist-in-Residence programs in Norway, Greece, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Spain, and Portugal. The unifying theme binding of all the works is the curving perception of the natural landscape and questions about the shifting boundaries between the domains of nature and technology.

Our relationship with landscapes is intricate and contradictory. We yearn for contact with pristine, untouched nature, yet we cannot resist the temptation to alter what we encounter. Captain James Cook reportedly established English-style gardens (thus, gardens imitating wild nature) on every island he reached in the South Pacific during his late 18th-century voyages. While encountering genuinely untouched areas, he sought to make them even more “natural,” but in accordance with his own beliefs about how nature should appear.

Even today, in the era of photographic overproduction, we experience landscapes in a mediated manner. We always see only what we believe (to quote the title of Errol Morris’s excellent book on photography). In “The Impossible Horizon,” Ewa and Jacek Doroszenko reveal the most surprising paradox of the landscape: the fact that the landscape as such does not exist. What exists are vantage points. The landscape is essentially a two-dimensional representation of what exists in the three-dimensional world. When we think of the Grand Canyon, the Iguazu Falls, the fjords of Norway, or the ergs of the Sahara, our memory inevitably recalls specific photographs taken from specific places at specific times.

Ewa and Jacek Doroszenko engage in a game with the concept of the landscape, addressing its various aspects. Their starting point is the words of Polish logician Alfred Korzybski: the map is not the territory. Jorge Luis Borges wrote: “In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map.” The Empire from the story “On Exactitude in Science” was, of course, fictional. However, the satellite images in Google Maps are not fictional – they seem to increasingly accurately overlap with the territory, but they offer an experience of the landscape in a fragmented, discontinuous, and structureless manner. Discontinuity, interruption of coherence, and deconstruction of structure are also what the Doroszenko duo accomplishes in their collages, objects, installations, and digital renders. The aesthetics of glitch and generative imperfection are inscribed in the long tradition of thinking about the landscape as a phantasm, for which the organizational categories are sublimity and picturesque, which still shape our expectations and imaginings of engaging with nature.

Using popular computer games, travel guides and other online sources, the artists reveal the dream of relaxing in an idyllic landscape, which is very common in the digital age. They look at a variety of landscapes based not only on visual aspects of reality, but equally the artists explore the usually overlooked sound environment. In the films presented at the exhibition, Ewa and Jacek Doroszenko use field recordings as the basis for polyphonic sound compositions and introduce a performative action that allows them to use the qualities of natural landscapes as systems of musical notation. In the sound installation, they present ways of musically reading the rhythmics of the reduced sound environment through the excitation and preparation of synthetic materials.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Ewa Doroszenko – an intermedia artist, Doctor of Fine Arts, lives and works in Warsaw. A graduate of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, a scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage in 2019 and 2024 and the City of Toruń in the field of culture in 2013 and 2011. Winner of many international competitions, including Preview – Fait Gallery Brno 2016, Debuts 2018 – doc! photo magazine, Debut 2018 – Lithuanian Photographers Association and finalist of, among others, Noorderlicht International Photo Festival 2021, Kranj Foto Fest 2021, International Festival of Photography FIF BH – Brazil 2020, Athens Digital Arts Festival 2020, GENERATE! Festival for Electronic Arts 2019, Der Greif and the World Photography Organization open call 2018, FILE Electronic Language International Festival Sao Paulo 2015, Young Art Biennial Rybie Oko 2013, Gray House Foundation Competition in Krakow 2011. Multiple participant of international artistic residencies, including. Hangar Barcelona in Spain, Kunstnarhuset Messen Ålvik in Norway, Atelierhaus Salzamt Linz in Austria, The Island Resignified Lefkada in Greece, Pragovka Gallery Prague in the Czech Republic, Klaipeda Culture Communication Center in Lithuania, Petrohradska Kolektiv Prague in the Czech Republic, Re_Act contemporary art laboratory in Portugal. She presented her works at many individual exhibitions, including at the Wrocław Contemporary Museum, Fait Gallery in Brno, Propaganda Gallery in Warsaw, Starak Family Foundation in Warsaw, Artists’ Colony in Gdańsk, Wozownia Art Gallery in Toruń, Galeria Miejska bwa in Bydgoszcz, Pragovka Gallery in Prague, Exgirlfriend Gallery in Berlin, National Forum Music named after Witold Lutosławski in Wrocław, Foto Forum in Bolzano, Polish Institute in Düsseldorf. Ewa Doroszenko’s works can be found in many art collections, including the collections of the Centre for Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Toruń, the Raffles Europejski Hotel in Warsaw, the Zachęta Lower Silesian Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts in Wrocław, and the Krupa Art Foundation in Wroclaw.

Jacek Doroszenko – an artist exploring the relationship between sound, image and space. He lives and works in Warsaw and Krakow. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, author of audiovisual works, video works, sound installations and internet projects. Scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage 2020, of the City of Toruń in the field of culture in 2011 and multiple participant of international artistic residencies, including: Hangar Barcelona in Spain, Kunstnarhuset Messen Ålvik in Norway, Atelierhaus Salzamt Linz in Austria, The Island Resignified Lefkada in Greece, Pragovka Gallery Prague in the Czech Republic, Klaipeda Culture Communication Center in Lithuania, Petrohradska Kolektiv Prague in the Czech Republic. He presented his works at many individual exhibitions, including at the Polish Institute in Düsseldorf, Foto Forum in Bolzano, Exgirlfriend Gallery in Berlin, Pragovka Gallery in Prague, National Forum of Music. Witold Lutosławski in Wrocław, Propaganda Gallery in Warsaw, Starak Family Foundation in Warsaw, Artists’ Colony in Gdańsk, Wozownia Art Gallery in Toruń, bwa Municipal Gallery in Bydgoszcz. He presented audiovisual projects as part of, among others: The Wrong New Digital Art Biennial in Rio de Janeiro, FILE Electronic Language International Festival in Sao Paulo, Transmission Arts Festival in Athens, ISEA International Symposium on Electronic Art in Vancouver, Athens Digital Arts Festival, Future Places Festival in Porto, European Media Art Festival in Osnabrück, Performing Media Festival in South Bend, CoCart Festival CSW in Toruń, Open-Source Art Festival in Sopot, Mediations Biennale in Warsaw. The artist also works in the field of music and sound art. His musical compositions have been published in the form of international albums, including Infinite Values, Time Released Sound in the USA; Wide Gray, Eilean Records in France; Soundreaming and Bodyfulness, Audiobulb Records UK.