Borderlands

Szymon Roginski

2015 — Poland

About this series

Referring to my theatrical roots I believe we get more information from an empty stage, without actors busy with their frantic daily routines – that’s why I work with space. When all the actors are sleeping but all the set is left for us to wonder.

The photographed places remain enigmatic: we don’t know their history and don’t know what may have happened in them.

Borderlands refers to the state of mind of Eastern Europeans more than the physical borders. However it was taken during a series of road trips around country borders.

My intention is to capture the peculiar moodiness of the Polish landscape with my specific phantasmal gaze and approach to lightning – I take most of my photographs after dark. Working at night besides obvious lack of people on sets, has many advantages for me: it helps to focus on a subject and to synthesize the scene.

My photographs don’t have the ambition to reveal a truth – I never felt as a documentalist. They show places and objects that for some are normal, obvious, and banal, but make me gawp in amazement. Feeling like it’s an eerie dream or nightmare.

I believe the viewers of my large format photographs don’t need to know what happened here, we just have to imagine.

Photographer: Szymon Roginski
Nationality: Polish
Based in: Warsaw, Poland
Website: szymonroginski.com
Instagram: @ufo_trainer

Szymon Roginski was born in 1975 in Gdansk, lives and works in Warsaw, PL

Education:

1997-1999 – College of Artistic Photography in Gdańsk, PL
1997-1998 – School on Wheels of the Derevo Theatre, DE/ NL

Selected exhibitions:

2018– Things to learn from Facebook, Third International Tbilisi Triennal, GS
2017– 2017 Acquisitions // Photography Exhibit, Museum of History of Photography, Cracow, PL
– Monuments, Piktogram, Warsaw, PL
– Fotográfica 2017, Museo Nacional De La Fotografia De Colombia, Bogota, CO
– Recognition, Platan Gallery, Budapest, HU (with Milán Rácmolnár)
– Neverland, Piktogram, Warsaw, PL

2016

– LUX, Archeology of Photography Foundation, Warsaw, PL
– Cities and (Velo)cities at De Markten, part of Summer of Photography 2016, 6th Biennale for Contemporary Photography, BOZAR, Brussels, BE
– Salon of New Photography, Raster Gallery, Warsaw, PL
– Entoptic Screening, Salon Akademii Gallery, Warsaw, PL

2015
– One Eyed Jacks, Piktogram, Warsaw, PL (solo)
– Tribute to Jerzy Lewczyński, WORTH TO REMEMBER!, Asymetria Gallery, Warsaw, PL
– Exquisite Corpse of Polish Photography, Awangarda Gallery, BWA Wrocław, Wrocław, PL
– Figures of Speech. The Architectural Sculpture of Warsaw 1918–1970, Xawery Dunikowski Museum of Sculpture, a  division of the National Museum in Warsaw, Warsaw, PL

2014
– Blackness, Aleksander Bruno Gallery, Warsaw, PL (solo)
– Lost in Landscape, Mart – Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto, IT
– Shock Therapy, Galeria Milli Reasurans Art Gallery, Istambul, TR

2013
– A Photo of the City. Warsaw Photography and Related Practices, Nowy Teatr, Warsaw, PL
– homeMade. Constructing Substitute Worlds, Łaźnia Centre for Contemporary Art, Gdańsk, PL
– Love Hotel, Ego Gallery, 8th Photography Biennial, Poznań, PL
– Telling the Baltic, Kunsthalle Rostock, Rostock, DE  (with Anna Zaradny)

2012
– Camera Obscura, project made with Architecture Foundation at Xawery Dunikowski Museum of Sculpture, a  division of the National Museum in Warsaw, Warsaw, PL (with Katarzyna  Korzeniecka)
– Project UFO, Photoespana/ Blanca Soto Gallery, Madrid, SP (solo)
– Wir In Dresden, Archeology of Photography Foundation, Warsaw, PL (solo)
– Sense of Place – European Landscape Photography, BOZAR, Brussels, BE
– Broken Movie. Cinematic Moments in Contemporary Art, Awangarda Gallery, BWA Wrocław, Wrocław, PL
– KRA, PF Photography Gallery, Zamek Culture Centre, Poznań, PL (solo)

2009
– Project UFO, Appendix 2, Warsaw, PL (solo)
– Take a Look at Me Now – Contemporary Work From Poland, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, EN
– Troublesome Images, 6th Photography Biennial, Poznań, PL
– Urbanity. Twenty Years Later, Praha, CZ/ Berlin, DE/ Bratislava, SK/ Budapest, HU/ Ljubljana, SI/ Warsaw, PL/ Vienna, AT

2008
– Red Eye Effect, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, PL
– Project UFO, Artist House, Jerusalem, IL (solo)
– Project UFO, 20th PhotoBiennale, Thessaloniki, GR (solo)
– Venus, Krakow Photomonth Festival, Cracow, PL

2007
– Project UFO, Biała Gallery, Lublin, PL (solo)
– Antiphotographs, 5th Photography Biennial, Arsenał Municipal Gallery, Poznań, PL

2006
-The New Documentalists, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, PL/ National Gallery in Bratislava, Bratislava, SK
-The End, My Friend, Spielhaus Morrisson Gallery, Berlin, DE

2005
– Landscapes, TR Gallery, Warsaw, PL (solo)
– Revenge on Realism – The Fictitious Moment in Current Polish Art, Krinziger – Projekte Gallery, Vienna, AT

2004
– Linger, Arsenał Municipal Gallery, Poznań, PL
– Young Polish Art, Polish Embassy in Tokyo, Tokyo, JP

Awards/ Grants/ Residencies:

2018 – Grant of Warsaw City, PL
2013 – Ministry of Culture  and National Heritage Scholarship, PL
2010 – Ministry of Culture  and National Heritage Scholarship, PL