Blazej Pindor, Untitled from the series Fugue State, 2013, archival print from 2017, 79.5 x 47 cm

A fugue state describes a process of dissociation, an individual temporarily escapes from their own identity, they do not remember who they are or where they have been. Such a state passes. We then return to “normality.” A fugue is also a musical composition based on an unfolding structure; it is linked to the dissociative fugue by its root and principle: escape and return—coda. The Situationists would describe this as derive, a drifting.

A journey through Warsaw, through buildings designed by the functionalist architect Romuald Gutt, turns into a journey in time. The artist Błażej Pindor circles several orbits at the same time: pre-war grey brick architecture, remnants of the People’s Republic of Poland, the present day which modernizes interiors but also constantly obliterates and transforms the remains of the two previous eras. These buildings are also in a state of fugue, slipping away and forgetting what they once were.

Błażej Pindor (b. 1973) is an outstanding photographer, a graduate of the Film and Television Department of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU). One of the eight archival giclee prints mounted on cardboard in the Galeria Studio Collection depicts the building of the School of Political Science at 56 Wawelska Street in Warsaw, built by Romuald Gutt between 1933–35. The building functioned initially as the Social Institute and then as the National School of Public Administration. After the war, it was extended by one floor.

Together with other photographs dedicated to Romuald Gutt’s architecture and the film ‘Manual Mode’, this work was shown at Pindor’s solo exhibition “Fugue State” at Galeria Studio in 2017.

w Galerii Studio w 2017 roku.

Dorota Jarecka