Exhibition

Hubert Czerepok: The Beginning 3 (Karahan Tepe)

Participants
  • Hubert Czerepok
    Hubert Czerepok

    Hubert Czerepok

    Graduate of the Antoni Kenar Secondary Art School in Zakopane and the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, where he studied under Izabella Gustowska and Jan Berdyszak. Completed post-graduate curricula at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht in the years 2002-2003, and at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Antwerp in the years 2004-2005. Draws, paints, creates objects and installations, shoots videos, generates animations, works on found footage films, creates multimedia projects, and remains active in public space. As part of the art duo Magisters (with Zbyszek Rogalski), produced absurd genre photographs and films. Working with Sebastian Mendez, created the strategic game Survivors of The White Cube – art world simulation. Explores connections between fiction and historical truth, with a particular focus on ways of facts mutating and undergoing formal and semantic transformation. Had multiple solo exhibitions in Poland and abroad, i.a. Początek (The Beginning) at Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw; Historia i utopia (History and Utopia) at the “Arsenal” Gallery in Białystok; Lux Aeterna at the Gallery Żak | Branicka in Berlin; Devil’s Island at the La Criée centre d’art contemporain in Rennes. Showed his works at You Imagine What You Desire – the 19th Biennale of Sydney; Cultural Transference at EFA Project Space, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York; and Regress / Progress at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw. Organiser of art workshops for children and young people of many years (i.a. at the Łaźnia Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdańsk, “Arsenal” Gallery in Białystok, and Kronika Centre for Contemporary Art in Bytom), exploring issues associated with expressing freedom and deconstructing stereotypes. Professor of the Academy of Art in Szczecin, where he is head of the Experimental Film Studio at the Faculty of Media Art.

Gallery
Hubert Czerepok: The Beginning 3 (Karahan Tepe)

2017, three-channel video installation, 22′45″

Hubert Czerepok’s Beginning 3 is a three-channel production shot on an archaeological site in Karahan Tepe, Turkey, where the oldest place of cult (dated 10,000 B.C.) was discovered, which suggests that the area might have been the cradle of human settlement. Wall-joined megalithic pillars had been used to erect oval structures on site prior to the Neolithic Revolution, before the days of agriculture or animal husbandry. The civilisation capable of accomplishing the feat as yet remains unknown. Nobody knows who or why filled the sanctuary site with earth and gravel 1,500 years later. The artist explores a variety of theories regarding the extraordinary location, comparing the journey into the distant past to a trip to Mars, and referencing Andrey Tarkovsky’s Stalker.

The film narrative is delivered by three robots directly alluding to Tarkovsky’s characters: RED the Writer (man of art), NEXT the Professor (man of science), and MAG the Stalker, symbol of spirituality. Fiction blends in with science, the multitude of hypotheses and theories expanding our take on reality, complex and ambiguous, leaving the question regarding sources and origins wide open.

* Mars Rover similes built by students and teaching staff of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Białystok University of Technology were used in the video, the students and staff also present on set in Turkey.

Na podstawie: 16.09 – 19.11.2017. Hubert Czerepok. The Beginning, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, https://zacheta.art.pl/en/wystawy/hubert-czerepok-poczatek?setlang=1.