Filmoteka Muzeum

One of Sosnowski’s earliest movies, produced during his studies at the School of Visual Arts in Wrocław, where the artist received a diploma in painting and TV production. Before he openly declared his post-conceptual stance in 1973, Sosnowski carried out a range of films that anticipated his later attempts at investigating the photographic-film medium in the context of a maximal reduction of the sign and depriving it of any information from beyond its structure.

The film Scalening of Fish is a simple record of the eponymous humdrum activity. It expresses Sosnowski’s early interest in analytical-conceptual experiments. According to the artist, the meaning is realised here in the form of “independent reflection in the viewer’s consciousness”, aroused by a visual stimulus from reality. It is additionally amplified by the disgust-provoking basis of the film’s aesthetic structure.

References: Łukasz Ronduda, Polish Art of the 70s Avant-garde, Warsaw 2009; Zdzisław Sosnowski, Goalkeeper, 1977, unpublished, Archive of the Centre for Academic Information and Documentation, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw.
 

(ŁM)