Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College Dublin Mon-Fri 11am- 6pm (Thurs 11am-7pm), Sat 11am-4.45pm Until Mar 23 01-8961116
You may remember Miroslaw Balka’s work from its prior appearances at the Douglas Hyde and Imma a few years back. Although he was born a long time after the second World War (1958), Balka’s mournful, meditative work, which deals with memory and history, seems haunted by the calamities of that time, particularly as experienced in his native Poland.
While Balka shows a video piece in Gallery 2, he has also selected the exhibition in Gallery 1. It consists of photographs by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, known at "Witkacy", a Warsaw-born artist who died on the day that Russia invaded Poland in 1939. "An intense and troubled man", Witkiewicz believed that Western culture was fatally unsound. Most of his photographs (such as
Ghost,above) are portraits dealing with "the enigma of personal existence and the threat of its effacement". They mingle a troubled darkness with absurd humour. Landscapes and self-portraits dominate the show.
Can't see that? Catch this
Elemental Butler Gallery, The Castle, Kilkenny Daily 10am-1pm/2-4.30pm Until Mar 6 056-7761106