Joanna Malinowska's Sculpture at Columbus Circle in NYC

JOANNA MALINOWSKA
BROADWAY MOREY BOOGIE
Columbus Circle, New York City
September 2014 - April 1 2015

New York - Broadway Morey Boogie is a contemporary outdoor sculpture exhibition spanning from Columbus Circle to 166th Street in Manhattan. Along the 5 mile stretch of Broadway artists including Dan Colen, Sara Braman, Lars-Erik Fisk, Drew Heitzler, Matt Johnson, Devin Troy Strother, Polish artist Joanna Malinowska will present a sculpture of a 15- foot tall American Bear titled, Chronicle of the Latter World, which will stand in the middle of Columbus Circle.

Malinowska’s artistic practice has always been guided by her interest in anthropology and ritualistic societies, worlds far removed from the western way of life. She juxtaposes imagery and ideas related to Native Americans and Native Alaskans with the contemporary modern world, not to emphasize the absurdity of one over the other, but to bring them both closer to mutual understanding. For the 2012 Whitney Biennial Malinowska hung a painting by the American Indian Movement activist and artist Leonard Peltier, considered by some to be unjustly imprisoned, alongside her own work. This gesture questioned the lack of representation of Native American artists in the biennale, and ultimately in the art world. A work also included in the biennial, This Project is Not Going to Stop the War/Journey to the Beginning of Time, is a video shown on an old fashioned television set in which the artist prepares a South American indigenous ritual elixir called the chicha de yucca. Here she draws a connection between the modernity of the TV set and an the ancient folk ritual.

Bears are a consistent motif in Malinowska’s work. During her installation-performance of a Soviet-era fashion show, titled Mother Earth Sister Moon made for Performa 09, a Siberian bear appears alongside models wearing pastel colored garments evoking the spirit of Eastern European science fiction movies of the 1950s and ’60s. The bear’s presence was a specific reference to the unexplained Tunguska event, a massive explosion in Siberia in 1908 believed to have been caused by an asteroid strike, which was a frequently subject of Soviet sci-fi novels and films.

In 2013, Joanna Malinowska’s widely celebrated solo exhibition at Canada Gallery in New York featured a 15-foot bear titled Falsely Humble standing over a six-ton pile of dirt brought in from the famed gold rush era Yukon Territory. Periodically throughout the exhibition Malinowska panned for gold in the imported heap of dirt; the falsely humble bear, bearing witness to the greed. The sculpture served the role of a totem, a symbol of Americana and the Wild West.

In Chronicle of the Latter World, the American black bear standing on Columbus Circle is made entirely of cement, reminiscent of the streets of New York: the bear, although completely removed from his natural habitat, is already structurally assimilated to its new home. The SLR camera around his neck is a symbol of contemporary gadgetry and every tourist’s obsession with preserving memories through images. It is a reflection of the countless travelers with the same devices hanging from their necks, passing by each day throughout the exhibition. In keeping with Malinowska’s concern for the environment, the bear holds in his palm a plastiglomerate stone: a newly-discovered multi-composite rock made of plastic and molten lava from Kamilo Beach in Hawaii, the first sign of human-made debris binding permanently with nature. Joanna Malinowska was born in 1972 in Gdynia, Poland and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received an MFA from Yale University and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Malinowska has participated in the Smack Mellon Artist Studio Program in New York. She is the recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.

Broadway Morey Boogie is presented by Marlborough Chelsea in partnership with the Broadway Mall Association, the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation.

Joanna Malinowska's sculpture has been made possible by generous support from the Polish Cultural Institute New York, Contemporary Art Partners, LP and William and Janet Schwartz.

• WHEN: Wed, September 17, 2014 - April 1 2015
  
• WHERE: Columbus Circle (between Eighth Avenue, Broadway, Central Park South and Central Park), New York, NY
  
• DIRECTIONS: A, B, C, D, 1 trains to Columbus Circle stop; M5, M7, M10, M20, M104 bus to Columbus Cir/8 Av stop;
  
• ADMISSION: Open to the public free of charge
  
  
• WHERE: Marlborough Chelsea, 545 West 25th Street, New York, 10001
  
• DIRECTIONS: A, C, L trains to 14 Street/8 Ave stop;
  
• MORE INFO: http://marlboroughchelsea.com or www.polishculture-nyc.org

THE POLISH CULTURAL INSTITUTE NEW YORK, established in 2000, is a diplomatic mission to the United States serving under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. The PCI New York is one of 24 such institutes around the world. It is also an active member of the network of the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) in its New York cluster.

The Institute’s mission is to build, nurture, and promote cultural exchange between the United States and Poland by presenting Polish culture to American audiences and by connecting Polish artists, researchers and scholars from various fields to American institutions, introducing them to their professional counterparts in the United States, and facilitating their participation in contemporary American culture.

The Institute produces and promotes a broad range of cultural events in theater, performance, dance, music, film, visual arts, literature, and the humanities. Among its past and present American partners are such distinguished organizations as Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Museum of Modern Art, the Jewish Museum, PEN American Center, the Poetry Society of America, YIVO, the National Gallery of Art, Yale University, 92nd Street Y, Columbia University, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Princeton University, the Harvard Film Archive, the CUNY Graduate Center, the Julliard School of Music, Film Forum, the Museum of the Moving Image, the Morgan Library & Museum, Anthology Film Archives, The Santa Fe Opera, the New Museum, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Symphony Space, the New York Public Library, the Cinefamily, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the Kennedy Center, and many more.

Our programs have included American presentations of works by such a wide range of distinguished artists, including filmmakers Agnieszka Holland, Roman Polański, Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Zanussi, Jerzy Skolimowski, Małgorzata Szumowska and Andrzej Żuławski; poets and authors Wisława Szymborska, Czesław Miłosz, Adam Zagajewski, Zbigniew Herbert, Tadeusz Różewicz, Ryszard Kapuściński, Stanisław Lem, Witold Gombrowicz and Bruno Schulz; composers Fryderyk Chopin, Karol Szymanowski, Mieczysław Weinberg, Andrzej Panufnik, Witold Lutosławski, Mikołaj Górecki, Krzysztof Penderecki andPaweł Mykietyn; theater directors Tadeusz Kantor, Jerzy Grotowski, Krystian Lupa, Grzegorz Jarzyna and Krzysztof Warlikowski; visual artists Alina Szapocznikow, Mirosław Bałka, Katarzyna Kozyra, Paweł Althamer, Edward Krasiński, Zofia Kulik, Józef Robakowski, Zbigniew Libera, Krzysztof Wodiczko and Magdalena Abakanowicz; and many other Polish researchers and scholars, public intellectuals, and social and cultural activists.

www.PolishCulture-NYC.org

MARLBOROUGH CHELSEA Marlborough Chelsea began, in earnest, in 2011 with the ascension of gallery owner Max Levai to the leadership post, and the appointment of Pascal Spengemann and Vera Neykov as directors. Shortly thereafter, a top-to-bottom renovation was completed, and a Lower East Side project space was added. A highly considered program of acclaimed exhibitions began to take form, attracting a growing roster of established and emerging artists. Marlborough Chelsea provides an exciting new venue to view work by some of the most innovative and admired contemporary artists working today.

Marlborough Chelsea operates autonomously from the other local and international branches of Marlborough Gallery.

marlboroughchelsea.com

BROADWAY MALL ASSOCIATION For 30 years, the Broadway Mall Association (BMA) has worked to beautify and maintain the malls. Founded initially as a community organization in 1980 by Eugene Hide to address neglect of the malls stemming from the City’s fiscal crisis of the 1970s, the BMA became a not-for-profit organization in 1987. Today, BMA remains committed to carrying out Eugene Hide’s vision of the Broadway malls as a beautiful stretch of greenery uniting the diverse neighborhoods along Broadway.

Broadway Mall Association serves millions of New Yorkers who live and work in the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights, West Harlem and Washington Heights. BMA also works to plant the seeds of economic development by upgrading and maintaining the malls and by providing winter lighting and public art exhibitions along upper Broadway.

www.broadwaymall.org

NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF PARKS & RECREATION NYC Parks is the steward of approximately 29,000 acres of land — 14 percent of New York City — including more than 5,000 individual properties ranging from Coney Island Beach and Central Park to community gardens and Greenstreets. We operate more than 800 athletic fields and nearly 1,000 playgrounds, 550 tennis courts, 66 public pools, 48 recreational facilities, 17 nature centers, 13 golf courses, and 14 miles of beaches. We care for 1,200 monuments and 23 historic house museums. We look after 650,000 street trees, and two million more in parks. We are New York City's principal providers of recreational and athletic facilities and programs. We are home to free concerts, world-class sports events, and cultural festivals.

www.nycgovparks.org