Cztery pory roku, lecz bez wiosny is a large-area installation that takes up whole first floor at the Kronika. It has been assembled with the use of ready-made components from the artist’s past set designs in the greatest theaters in Poland. The aim was for those components to fill the whole exhibition space and tensions, meanings and contexts presented there are referring to the problems of social and economic life in Poland, including state of the education or popular ways of relaxation and leisure time activities. The whole exhibition is interactive so that the audience can touch it, make changes to it, move various components and to feel the energy of presented scenes and histories. Members of the audience can enter into the set design which is usually prohibited by theatrical and museum etiquette.

Project originated partially from disagreement towards stereotypical perception of set designer who in the eyes of theatrical critics is a person with purely artisanal attitude to drama’s background, as well as distrustful attitude of the art world members who believe that typical set design way of thinking disturbs white cube sterility. Set design here becomes installation’s material. Both transdisciplinary categories merge into inseparable entity.

Second part of the exhibition presented in the old residential space of the Kronika, allows audience to enter into artist’s private space – home, devoid of family taboo. The main components of that part are very personal, monochromatic or even vanitas type paintings. Korchowiec paintings deal mainly with problems of an individual (where the artists serves as an example) with relation to the smallest social structure – family, which sometimes brings more frustration than support and quite often serves as the main sensor in the individual’s life. Presentation contexts are built with relation to the specific interior furnishings, as well as video materials. They perversely refute middle-class character of temporary painting.
Michał Korchowiec says: „I believe that set design constitutes a visual answer to problems and ideas that inspire a theatrical play and in the same time it brings new meanings and tensions. My subsequent projects create coherent vision of the world, they can function independently as exterritorial works of art that carry their own stories. The installation uses parts of set designs created by me and presents my diagnosis of reality: era of lost and lonely people, as well as declining culture, and is further intensified by display of very personal painting”.

Michał Korchowiec (born 1987) – visual artist employing means such as: painting, installation, as well as video, theatrical set designer (cooperates with Monika Strzępka and Paweł Demirski; author of set design for Mister D. videos). A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. Her works have been displayed in numerous individual and collective exhibitions, domestically and abroad. Lives and works in Warsaw.

Exbition co-organised with Center for Polish Scenography in Katowice – division of Silesian Musueum in Katowice.

Part of the exhibition – Cztery pory roku, lecz bez wiosny is presented together with Kronika’s project Plica Polonica, executed with the support of The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.