Anna Zaradny, visual and sound artist, composer and improviser has long been fascinated by the Brutalist architecture of Kraków’s Bunkier Sztuki gallery. The former Exhibition Pavilion in the Planty Park presents her exhibition Rondo Denoting Circle – a visual and sound structure built around the titular circle and its derivatives mandalas and spirals, which “take a form of a looping composition spinning between turbulent emotions and cool intellect.”
Drawing inspiration from the building, the objects, installations and performances, the artist invokes individuals that inspire her: the Mediaeval visionary and composer Hildegard of Bingen, the 19th-century pianist Tekla Bądarzewska, the contemporary composer and conductor Witold Lutosławski, and the musical pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen. The German composer is one of the protagonists of the Sacrum Profanum festival in October, and the exhibition serves as a preview of the event.
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Anna Zaradny – sound and visual artist, composer, instrumentalist. Characteristic of her creative practice is integration of music, sound art and visual arts, manifesting itself in the multichannel installations and objects as well as spatial-musical compositions she constructs. Solo displays authored by Zaradny include Pass/ed (No Local, Krakow, 2010), Tongue of Venus (Starter Gallery, Warsaw, 2012) and Reconstruction (Starter Gallery, Warsaw, 2015). Zaradny’s works have been featured in many collective exhibitions, including Early Years (KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2010), As You Can See: Polish Art Today (Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, 2014), Mere Formality (Labirynt Gallery, Lublin, 2015) and The Silence of Sounds (Wrocław Contemporary Museum, 2016). In 2011 she was included among the finalists of “VIEWS Deutsche Bank Foundation Award” and received the audience prize. Zaradny frequently performed at Polish and international music festivals, such as In Between (Chicago, 2001), Hafarot Seder Festival (Tel Aviv, 2007), “What is Music?” (Sydney/Melbourne, 2009), Unsound (New York, 2011 and London/Krakow, 2013), EMFP Festival (Tokyo, 2011) and El Nicho Aural Festival (Mexico City, 2014), as well as at the Polish Composers’ Union’s “7+7=70” Festival of Seven Trends (Warsaw, 2016). Having for many years curated the late Musica Genera Festival of experimental and improvised music, she continues to run the Musica Genera record label. Her discography covers both solo records and collaborations—with, among others, Burkhard Stangl, Robert Piotrowicz, Christian Fennesz and Kasper T. Toeplitz. Zaradny also creates music for stage plays and performative acts.
The exhibition space will host Anna Zaradny’s performance Go Go Theurgy during the opening, due to begin at 7 pm. In addition, two concerts will give the opportunity to experience the artist’s musical output: first by Noetinger/Piotrowicz/Zaradny trio, on October 7th in ICE Kraków (as part of the Sacrum Profanum festival), then by Zaradny unaccompanied, on October 20th in the former Forum hotel (as part of the Unsound festival).
