Dudek’s practise is influenced by brutalist housing architecture and the global phenomena of urbanization. Her work investigates the tension and interconnections between these architectural forms and the human body. Dudek examines the notion of detaching body from the given structure and seeks new means of visual and physical representations of human existence.

The exhibition aims to observe the spilling over the boundaries of bodily existence and the liminality of both sensorial and architectural worlds. The central narrative of the exhibition is the human condition and the constant balancing of the ever advancing brutal urbanisation against the fragile and yielding body. The wordplay of feeler – an animal organ such as an antenna that is used for testing things by touch; and filler – a thing put in a space or container to fill it, is physically articulated by the selection of artworks. At Galeria Foco Dudek creates a sensorial environment with the fluidity of formats between traditional studio photography, images of site-specific housing structures and freestanding objects made of concrete, silicon and latex.

The new series of photographs shot in Lisbon – Inhabited – depicts the living conditions. Our attention is drawn to the visible cracks and circles, windows, structures of concrete used to fill the pores and grain, the insufficiency of given space for humans, the dailiness and its banality. The Fruiting Body series stands in opposition. The forms presented are fluid, natural and multilayered. It’s a body that accrues as a parasite, living depending on its base, which defines its being. The somehow unifying series of both structures are objects placed in the gallery accordingly. Compositions molded in synthetic materials used to cover or fill the gap, resonate the tangibility of the space and Dudek’s body of works, addressing the idea of proximity. ‘Feelers’ tends to undergo physical poetics and synesthetic experience. The show is rooted in the mythology of human performance by incorporating anthropomorphic elements and structures. The artist consciously and repetitively uses mediums and materials, which provoke questions of their metaphysical states. Through vacillating between the human and the material structure Dudek constructs the ongoing story of what is imparted and what possibly could be redefined.

Curated by Kasia Sobczak

©Photodocumenta