La lettre s’approche à sa
destination encore un moment
d’attente en haleine et voilà qu’à
l’entrée un trouble soudain éclate.

Galeria Wschód is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Tbilisi-born, Düsseldorf-based artist Keta Gavasheli (b.1990) titled Skład pamięci. 

Drawing inspiration from a 1967 happening by Polish artist Tadeusz Kantor (1915 – 1990) titled The Letter, the work sees Gavasheli debut new photographs, sound installation and objects created to speak to Kantor’s legacy. This exhibition is part of a year-long program by Wschód New York presenting Polish historical and avant-garde voices in dialogue with contemporary positions.

In 1967, Tadeusz Kantor tasked eight postmen with the job of carrying an unusually large letter (two meters high and fourteen meters long) from the Main Post Office in Ordynacka Street through the streets of Warsaw. The post men were dressed in postal uniforms, and they were accompanied by policemen on their journey. The event lasted two and a half hours and ended at the Foksal Gallery, to which the letter was addressed. Kantor was a renowned theatre director, professional painter, assemblage artist, avant garde set designer, art theorist, happenings artist, actor, and a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków.

He was a founder of both the second Cracow Group, gathering key avant-garde figures in post-war Polish art, and Cricot 2, one of the most significant experimental theatres in the world. In Kantor’s rich oeuvre – voices, sounds, and their afterlives – make up a crucial tissue of his artistic legacy.

To Kantor, a letter is a crossed object that opens the perspective of the “impossible”, which this time was emphasized by an aura of the unknown. The author assigned himself the role of inconn – the mysterious addressee of the message that justified the size of the letter and was never disclosed – Joanna Mytkowska, Director of The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw

Skład pamięci translates to Memory entrepôt and takes Kantor’s happening, The Letter, as a point of departure. In Skład pamięci, the archival sounds and voices recorded around Kantor’s 1967 happening are echoed in the lower level of the gallery on 136 Orchard St. Their historical resonance constructs the experimental infrastructure for Gavasheli. Her work is a translation of her performative practice, where sound is processed and transformed into a visual language. In the exhibition, she visualizes recorded soundscapes through panoramic images, creating a unified composition in which sound and image merge. Her practice is a form of environmental observation, where different materials and artistic approaches intersect to explore the spaces in which she operates – whether on stage or beyond it. Through these works, she navigates and reconsiders the boundaries between private and public spaces, offering new ways of seeing and experiencing them.

Gavasheli’s objects presented in Memory entrepôt, consisting of tape recorders and cassettes with elements of sound and spoken word, make up a vital response to Kantor’s methodology and artistic approach. In light of this, the performative text by curator and critic Antoni Michnik specialising in soundscape and sound studies, will produce yet another layer to the character of Memory entrepôt, focusing on the rhythm of sound performance as a medium itself. Presented in the exhibition archival photographs of the 1967 happening by Eustachy Kossakowski, on the other hand, will serve to extend the dialogue between Gavasheli and Kantor further whilst providing a greater insight into the nature of this historical event. Gavasheli’s panoramic still images on canvas, found across her objects, derive from her ongoing video work, which will be on display at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in April.