Zofia Kulik – Rhythms of Power

Zofia Kulik – Rhythms of Power

FC – Francisco Carolinum
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Linz
22.03. – 28.07.2024

Curated by Nathalie Hoyos and Rainald Schumacher

Zofia Kulik – Rhythms of Power is the Polish artist’s first survey exhibition in Austria. The artist was born in Wrocław in 1947 and now lives near Warsaw. This presentation of her work stretches back to the late 1960s, when she was a student in the sculpture department at the Academy of Fine Arts (ASP) in Warsaw.

The exhibition provides valuable insight into Zofia Kulik’s working methods. Almost all of her photographic compositions are produced in the darkroom, using an analogue process of multiple exposure to combine hundreds of single images. Kulik photographs and records visual reality. Over the years, she has taken thousands of photographs – often black-and-white, and mainly shot in her studio. Archived as negatives and organised into different categories, they come close to encompassing the entire visible world. Models in various poses; skulls; bones; vegetables; flowers; dogs; fabrics; buildings; postcards; masks; explosions; cities: these are just a few of the more than 250 categories she has established. The sketches, drawings and stencils included in this display reveal how Kulik uses these motifs to construct complex staged scenarios and multi-layered pictorial worlds.