Michał Gayer

Michał Gayer works in the painting medium, though he uses other techniques as well. In his works, he plays with codes and messages, engaging the viewer in a game with the artist. He also refers to the painstaking effort of critical description and interpretation of art. Describing his “Typewriter”, he admits that he designed an object meant for pointless writing. The keypad was to be left unmarked, the thoughts flowing to a closed container down a paper lead straight from the pressed keys. In his painting “Stroking. The Portrait of Helena Mathei”, based on a press photograph, he portrays a Silesian Gestapo agent. He painted her with slow, gentle movements of his fingertips. This game of morphing paintings and photographs is also played in his other works. The picture/photo “Becker, Barkmann/ S1” shows the Stutthof camp guards executed in 1946 in Gdańsk. “The ropes and visible fragments of gallows were not painted. Elisabeth Becker’s head was straightened. The picture was then photographed. The reproduction was printed. Printer settings were manipulated. The printout was covered with another. Next, the printed reproduction was photographed again. The process was repeated. The result was a photograph.” The artist labelled this action a “dishonest trick”, later to elaborate on the idea in a very coherent individual exhibition at Bytom’s Kronika, which concentrated on the impossibility of perception and deliberately stretched the viewers’ patience to the limit. Gayer’s latest exhibition at the Bęc Zmiany gallery featured a cycle of drawings inspired by the popular science novel with sci-fi elements “Beyond the Planet Earth” by one of the pioneers of astronautics, rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), which the artist had bought from a second-hand bookstall at the railway station. He decided to draw a series of illustrations for the non-existent new edition of the novel. Michał Gayer often uses simple materials and their meanings. Some of them touch on the issue of poverty and social exclusion. They include “aluminium cans with beverages inside, bought in a shop and hand-polished – a few zlotys and two hours of polishing.” He adds: “I was inspired by Koons’ mirror-surfaced works, the shapes of inflatable toys that fascinated him so much, their Polish equivalents and the scrap aluminium pickers from the city.” In his Geppert Competition work “The English Lesson”, he explains the Polish post-transformation reality by means of a letter he found and some “poor” objects. He presents the “losers” of the transition and creates their iconography.

Michał Gayer, Lesson 1 form Good cycle, installation, readymade, audio, 2011

Found letter, phot. P.Sikora

 

phot. P.Sikora

 

audio script:

Side 1 B. S., Włocławek, ul. Fredry 10 m. 1. I have been hypnotised since childhood. September 7^th, 2009, a surgery, laparoscopy, lipno. They have removed the gallbladder. It turned out there had been no polyp or fibroids just some cholesterol lodgements. I am suspecting the gallbladder has been unnecessarily removed. Cholesterol could have been removed pharmacologically just as well as the gallbladder inflammation could have been treated with antibiotics. Such a small amount of cholesterol and for sure, didn’t cause a cholecystitis. Liver was poisoned with hydrochloric acid for etching circuit boards (crossed) that are printed in Toral plants, that is hydrochloric acid + copper, which someone poured into water in my kettle in 2003 when my daughter used to work at McDonald’s and the bishop B. Dembowski together with the (illegible) foundlings and the Moczar’s family used to filch her money. As everyone knows, hospitals have to save money, which means they can’t examine patients carefully because it is then an unnecessary expenditure and the health fund won’t cover it, which is one thing and the other is they have it limited. Cows like Ewa Kopacz tell them to save money, to plan. Only she who’s no true doctor can talk such bullshit. Many diseases show similar symptoms and every patient’s organism is different from others. A correct diagnosis requires lots of examinations and tests for the ultrasound itself is not an accurate procedure.  They are making fools out of our good talented doctors. In some hospitals, they can’t treat patient’s because the limits are exceeded. If a doctor does not treat the patient, you ignorant dumbass, he transgreses the Hipocratic oath and will be prosecuted, he, not Ms. E. Kopacz, the national health care or government morons. In my case, they did what they had to in hospital. The gallbladder has been diagnosed for extra examination but they can’t afford it because it won’t be covered or there won’t be funds for treating other patients. I was feeling very well after they had performed a surgery on me; I had no abdominal pain and all healed very quickly even though I have diabetes. In comparison to other patients who underwent the same procedure in different hospitals, my surgery was performed for A+ grade. Doctors in Poland can develop skills like “House MD”.  Soon the doctors’ help in hospitals will shrink to bloodletting, cupping or applying leeches or perhaps to (illegible) me and with sprinkling. How does our government imagine planning health care budget? Do they also plan their budgets for medical treatment at their homes? Especially when they have kids there or elderly people? And a 900 zlotys salary or pension? We are returning back to the People’s Republic times, to Stalin, Gomulka, when the manager’s task at a workplace was to plan the number of accidents, deaths etc. Can anyone foresee a disease, an accident, deaths, epidemics? Yes, one can, but only when you poison entire villages with anthrax, biotoxins, or other kind of abomination yourself, and, such thing is actually being done in Poland.  To the deceased too, but only because our government helps so that the Vatican mafia, the fascist mafia could catch all those who dared to stand up for my family. They even passed them bills, they signed it. 8. 09 – 9.09. I was being hypnotised. They didn’t let me sleep. The Holy Spirit spoke to me: there’s an US investigation board coming on Friday to Poland to check on parcels to the hypnotised woman. A board on the same case was also said to come to Poland from France and Russia. The CBA attacks corrupt thieves:  among them J. and O. Kwasniewski. J. Kwasniewska wasn’t even slightly abashed. Oh well, B. Blida was a thief (she was supposed to testify against the mafia) so she killed herself rigth after they’d come for her. In my opinion, it’s they who killed her. Mrs Kwasniewska’s reputation is crystal-clear so she wasn’t abashed at all. She just knew about the whole CBA incident. It all was only to clear her of charges, just like the cardiac surgeon M. Gembowski, to let him continue working for the fascist- vatican mafia. Now she can do what she wants and nobody can pick on her. Mr. and Mrs. Kwasniewski prooved that they have same power as M. Gembowski, the cardiac surgeon.  It’s good, among other things, for the election campaign for President of the Republic of Poland. Cleared of charges, she’s now crystal-clear. How about Mr. And Mrs. Kwaśniewski explain the latifundium in Idzbark in Warmia, all in shameful luxury; the place where they have spent their holiday. Who does it belong to? If it’s not their then whose is it? And how much did they pay for the holidays when they were all by themselves and had everything for their own private use? At that time, when Warsaw, the intellectuals, and the student youth were fighting for me, J. Kwasniewska, the convent, J. Ligocka Side 2,