Jan Tomza-Osiecki is part of a generation for whom the intensive experience of virtual reality – via new media, the Internet, simple programming languages, gaming, and 3D graphics and design – is key to creating works of art. His own works are a conscientious and thorough reaction to the culture of proxies and the ethereal. Tomza-Osiecki’s point of departure is the abstract sculptural form, which he animates through the introduction of sound, endowing it with realness and dynamism. The acronym in the title – ISPC – stands for the Integration of Sonic and Physical Composition. The functioning of the artist’s interactive objects is based on a feedback effect, which is typically considered undesirable among engineers. Electrical systems of microphones and speakers built within the sculptural mass work together, emitting a range of uncontrolled grinding, screeching, whirring and vibration: touch becomes tension, tension becomes sound, sound becomes movement. Certain objects manufactured with a meticulous hand out of luthier wood are instruments of sorts, giving the audience a chance at their own improvisation. The noisome issue of feedback is now at the heart of the object’s purpose, opening up the field of experimentation and creating possibilities for gaining a new understanding for familiar spaces and the movement’s of one’s own body.
The show presents a series of works from the past several years – from an abstract study in clay and his graduate project installation, through his newest interactive objects, shown for the first time. The sequence illustrates the artist’s conceptual evolution, following how sculptural elements, the interactive layer of sound and a studied form – in both its material and design aspects – approach a progressively perfected effect of synthesis. At the same time the intensification of various stimuli – touch, audio and visual – is an attempt to evoke the fundamental experience of physicality, of genuine physical movement, time and space.
Tomza-Osiecki’s pursuits simultaneously draw upon the possibilities afforded by the latest technologies and traditional materials. They contain in equal measure a longing for pure, avant-garde experimentation and a faith in the form traditionally viewed as a synthesis of creativity and matter.
Jan Tomza-Osiecki (born 1985) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw’s Department of Sculpture (graduated 2012), University College Falmouth and the SAE Institute London in the Sound Engineering Department. He was a resident of the School of Visual Arts in New York. In 2014 he had an solo show at the BWA Gallery in Zielona Góra.
