FLIGHT

A portrait of Roman Stanczak, legendary performer and sculptor of the 90s and source of inspiration for the alumni of the famed Kowalnia studio of Warsaw’s Academy of Fine Arts, including Pawel Althamer, Katarzyna Kozyra and Artur Zmijewski. Tying himself up with power cords, stripping furniture, turning a metal kettle inside out, Stanczak has been trying to find ways to kill his inner bourgeois, making himself the most uncompromising artist of his generation. But being a true rebel does come with a cost. Why did he disappear off the face of the earth? What’s been happening to him for all those years?

After decades of absence, Stanczak gets a chance to reemerge in the art world. Torn and conflicted, he has to face the damage in his life. Is he still the same person, the same artist? Juxtaposing archival footage with contemporary shots, the film is a rough and honest collage. The audience is privy to Stanczak’s frenzied but precise creative process, while he cuts up and puts back again a plane turned  inside out, using lacework techniques for scrap metal the size of a whale.

Never before the 2019 Venice Biennale has the exhibition of Polish Pavilion been a theme of such fervent discussions. For Polish audiences the artist’s work inevitably brings to mind the Smolensk plane crash, but what’s the true meaning behind the installation? Can Stanczak rebuild  his career and fix all the strained relationships?