Photos: Robert Sochacki.

For the architectural projection on the “Erlöserkirche” Robert Sochacki uses a selection of images from his personal collection as well as from the Lüdenscheid town archive. Images from the Middle Ages include images of Count Engelbert and Saint Medardus; photographs of materials and tools as well as of everyday situations in public life are taken from the history of crafts and industry in Lüdenscheid; moving images of people in urban space originate from the present. The tower and nave are the projection surface of the continuously changing tableau.

Large-format façade projections have become a focal point of Robert Sochacki’s artistic work. He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk and later worked as a stage designer and VJ. In his work as a visual artist, he is currently concentrating on performative imagery, which he calls “video painting”. He has just completed his doctorate in art in public space at the Academy of Fine Arts Gdansk (pl).

His projections are montages that bring analog and digital, historical and contemporary imagery into play. They are not static but continuously changing so that the building’s envelope and the image contents develop constantly new visual links. Since 1997 he has been regularly present in exhibitions and projects. In 2010 he realized his first large-format architectural projection as part of the NARRACJE exhibition project in his hometown Gdansk (pl).

Photos: Referential Works 2013 – 2018. Photos: Jennifer Braun, Brahim Guedich.

Now he follows the invitation of the LICHTROUTEN curators Bettina Pelz and Tom Groll to develop a new city intervention for Lüdenscheid at the beginning of the city’s anniversary celebration. With the “Erlöserkriche”, the oldest building of the city becomes the canvas to stage a kaleidoscope of the city’s history. “I find it great to work site-specifically because I spend time in a special environment. I see myself as a guest here. For me, the inhabitants of the city are the owners and I am a guest who tells stories. This is also a bit like in the Middle Ages when singers went through the cities and told their stories on the market square….. I had a wonderful experience during the SEE DJERBA project in Houmt El Souk: I sat on a carpet and used it as a work surface or desk and worked in public space.”, he explained in an interview with Jule Kriesel. Like a “Minstrel”, Robert Sochacki develops his tableau for Luedenscheid. “Minne Songs” are a ritualized form of the sung love lyrics of the 12th and 13th century and the term “Minne” from Middle High German can be translated as “loving remembrance”. Although the “Minne Songs” thematically refer mainly to the worship of noble women, they are not love songs in the closer sense. The special features of this poetry are the sophisticated rhymes, the complex imagery, and the well-thought-out structure. This is also how Robert Sochacki’s way of working can be read: He combines art-historical knowledge and local stories, aesthetic peculiarities and poetic art forms, complex technology and tailor-made codings and his own view of complex pictorial structures, in which the found place plays the leading role.

The “Erlöserkirche” stands in the center of the old town and was first mentioned in a document in 1072. Over the centuries it has undergone many renovations and modifications, and only the tower of the “Erlöserkirche” is preserved from the 11th century. The tower shaft is secured by 180 iron anchors in the facade which are as well the only design feature of the façade. “The tower is a witness to the town’s history and I play with its memory,” said Robert Sochacki in the course of the preparations in conversation with Tom Groll. Similar to the metaphor of memory, his way of working can also be explained:  Memory is a complex system in which information and experience become memories. They form a network of information that is linked by engrams. Depending on their use, these routes of communication can become stronger and weaker and change continuously. Similarly, the montages by Robert Sochacki are based on the available pool of images and information and show them as variable _ in color, form, and format and in their relationships to each other.

Robert Sochacki has already been to LICHTROUTEN in Lüdenscheid once before. His work at the Wiedenhof was one of the three most popular LICHTROUTEN installations in 2013 [link]. The large format, the colorfulness and the fantastic picture worlds made him a darling of the public. Now he is invited to Lüdenscheid for a second time to realize a new, site-specific intervention. This time not in the context of the LICHTROUTEN, but as a solitaire for the celebration of the city’s jubilee.

Preview
Robert Sochacki develops a large-format architectural projection for the “Erlöserkirche”. It will be on view from 28 to 30 April 2018 from approx. 9 pm to Midnight.

For his interventions for exhibitions, stages and public spaces, Robert Sochacki combines drawing and painting, photography and videography and animation. He develops large-format murals that make the location and its architecture part of a multimedia collage. MORE

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2018 | Hildesheim (de), EVI LICHTUNGEN
2017 | Houmt El Souk (tn), SEE DJERBA
2015 | Katowice (pl), TAURON NOWA MUZYKA
2013 | Lima [pe], LA NOCHE EN BLANCO
Since 1997 | Regular exhibition activity, mainly in Europe

BACKGROUND
2018 | Gdansk (pl), AKADEMY OF FINE ART, Conferral of a Doctorate
1991-1997 | Gdansk (pl), AKADEMIE OF FINE ART, Studies of Fine Art
1971 | born in Gdansk (pl)
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LINKS
sochacki.art.pl
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