Aneta Grzeszykowska & Jan Smaga

Aneta in chest stand, 2008
Aus Acrobat Book
C-print on cardboard, 24.3 x 19.5 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
2010-015-001

Aneta Grzeszykowska, b. 1974 (Warsaw, PL); Jan Smaga, b. 1974 (Warsaw, PL), live in Warsaw, PL
In the form of a twenty-part accordion-fold book, the photo series Acrobat Book shows the artist Aneta Grzeszykowska in various acrobatic positions. Together with her partner Jan Smaga, Grzeszykowska explores the boundaries of corporeality by stretching and deforming herself into almost painfully extreme positions. The project creates a connection between real performance and projected fantasy, and the artists intend it to be viewed as a kind of visual illusion. The deformed body is a metaphor for the image as a flexible, malleable object without boundaries.