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Starting today, Polish artist Ludwika Ogorzelec will use bamboo and plastic wrap to create her Space Crystallization Cycle, a site-specific installation, for about two weeks at the Williams Center for the Arts.
Visitors are invited to watch her progress in the Williams Center gallery and lobby as Ogorzelec produces a system of intersecting lines that shatter space into smaller components. Her progress also will be chronicled on the Williams Center gallery’s web page. The work will remain on exhibit through Sunday, Oct. 12.
Ogorzelec will give a talk about her art noon Monday, Sept. 15, in Williams Center room 108 and attend a reception in her honor 3-5 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 28, at the gallery. Both events are free and open to the public.
According to the artist, The Space Crystallization is a system of lines intersecting one another with a certain order and modifying the previously determined space both physically and in its use. In other words, it is a shattering of space into smaller components – crystals — to achieve a new aesthetic and psychological state that acts on the conscious and subconscious mind of the observer.
“A person following the picture created by the moving line experiences the necessity of adjusting to the spatial situation, producing motions of the body (bending, ducking or stepping around), which is a form of dance, and simultaneously experiences states that go beyond the boundaries of quotidian stereotypes, behavioral codes, and habits,” says Ogorzelec. “The activity of space is a result of the meeting of the ‘entrancing energy’ and the ‘extrinsic energy’ imparted by the line to the space.
Previously, Ogorzelec’s installations have been composed of wood, glass, or fabric. She switched recently to bamboo and plastic wrap to explore the effects of light and sound.
Born in Poland in 1953, Ogorzelec earned a master’s in sculpture while studying from 1978-83 at the Leon Podsiadly Studio of the Fine Arts Academy in Wroclaw, Poland. She has lived and worked in Paris since 1985, studying at the Cesar Studio of the National Fine Arts School in Paris from 1985-87.
Her art has been featured in one-person shows in Belgium, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Lebanon, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It also has been included in group shows in France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Monaco, Poland, and the United States. Ogorzelec’s art also is represented in collections based in six different countries. She has received two arts grants and led arts programs internationally as well.
Williams Center gallery hours are noon-5 p.m. Monday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday; and 2-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, and before public performances in the Williams Center, which is located at the intersection of Hamilton and High Streets on Lafayette’s main campus. For more information, call the gallery at 610-330-5361 or email artgallery@lafayette.edu.
The Williams Center gallery is funded in part by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts.