History of the VR Virtual Unism and the VR Virtual Unism 2020 artwork, and its presentations.

At the exhibition Constructive / Reductive, curated by Dr Judith Duquemin at the The Queensland College of Art (QCA) in Brisbane, Queensland in Australia I presented my new concept of the VR Virtual Unism 2020 artwork. I created this artwork especially for this exhibition.

VR has a lot of applications outside of art, and in art it is used, even today, by the few artists as a method of artistic expression and the matter of a work of art. The use of the VR technique in art is based on the narrative which is a record of the conceptual artwork. I created the first such a narrative combining Unism with the VR technology in 2005. For the first time, based on the theory of Unism, I found a dialogue between this theory and methods of the VR technique; spatial-optical properties of virtual reality. What creates virtual sculpture as an infinite energy form of time and space (my experimental series of artworks: ENERGY OF SPACE and CONCEALED ENERGY and EXPOSED ENERGY OF SPACE from 1987 – 1992, individual exhibition Museum of Architecture, Wrocław, Poland).

The world premiere of the VR "Virtual Unism" networked exhibition, based on my conceptual artwork, took place during VR shows at the IGRID, the International scientific conference of the global network Calit2 at the University of California in San Diego on September 26-29, 2005: International Conference on Advanced Scientific Research in International and National Global Network Systems Calit2, University of California, San Diego, CA, September 26-29, 2005, in cooperation with the UIC EVL in Chicago. This implementation is described in the materials of this conference, there is also a rich photographic record of this show. An integral part of this networked exhibition is a narrative based on my conceptual work Virtual Unism - GosiaKoscielak©2005, a philosophical and theoretical concept justifying this autonomous work of art.

“GOSIA KOSCIELAK’s conceptual artwork and the title of her conceptual artwork series “Virtual Unism” was the basis for the iGrid 2005 virtual reality implementation, developed for iGrid 2005. Starting in 1994, Gosia began researching the theory of Unism, a modernist art theory created in the beginning of the 20th century by Władyslaw Strzemiński and Katarzyna Kobro in Poland. “

- EVL UIC, Chicago website

As an assistant of prof. Wanda Gołkowska (Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, Poland) since the second half of the 1980s, I have actively participated in the international and Polish geometric art movement and in artistic activities related to the geometric abstraction, as well as conceptualism, structuralism, and mail art for nearly 35 years. Before moving to the USA (1992) from Europe I took part in many geometric abstract art exhibitions in Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, Greece, and Unism was one of the art theory references I was in artistic dialog with that time. In the 1980s I was a participant in the plein-airs of Dr Bożena Kowalska for the Artists Using the Language of Geometry in Okuninka near Chełm, Poland, and my works are in the collection of the Museum in Chełm, Gallery 72. In the 1980s I also ran Galeria Rekwizytornia in Contemporary Theatre in Wrocław, which mainly had geometric abstraction in the program. I also participated in the artistic movement animated by Jurgen / Gerard Blum-Kwiatkowski, and my works are in collections at the Museum Modern Art in Hunfeld and the New Space Gallery in Fulda, Germany, where I appear in catalogs and posters. I have participated in many exhibitions of the international systemic and geometric art movement since the 1980s, among others, I have participated in the following exhibitions and conferences: Konstruktiv und Konkret, Kleine Galerie, Ilmenau in Germany in 1993, in 2000 I participated in the EXPOSITIE L'IDEE exhibition 2D + 3D Mondriaahuis, Mondrian Museum, Amersfoort, The Netherlands, in 1994 Sonderausstellung-Neuerwerbungen, Museum of Modern Art, Hunfeld, Germany. In 1990 I took part in the exhibition Konstruktive Stromungen, Ars Polona Gallery, Dusseldorf, Germany, Konkrete Multiples, Gallery L'Idee in Zoetermeer in the Netherlands, Geometria i Światło (Geometry & Light), International Plain Air in Okuninka, Poland. In 1989 Null Dimension, Kunst International, Gmunden, Austria, Null Dimension, Museum of Architecture, Wroclaw, Poland, 3 Pro-Conference in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, in 1988 Null Dimension, Space Gallery, Fulda, Germany, Pro-Conference in New Space Gallery, Fulda, Germany. In 2019, I also took part in the Interdiscursive Geometry - Non-Objective exhibition, Action Gallery, SMB Imielin, Warsaw, Poland, Interdiscursive Geometry - Non-Objective 2, University Gallery in Cieszyn, Poland, and in 1988 I took part in the Young Generation of Polish Constructivism, Athens, Greece, curated by my sister Elżbieta Kościelak. The exhibition was also accompanied by a catalog. During the PRO Conference and 3 PRO - Conference, international system and geometric art conferences in Fulda, Rotterdam, and Madrid I met a distinguish member of the legendary group of American Structuralism, T. Michael Stephens, the Director of the Art Research Center, and I am currently an associate member of this group.

Art Research Center Wikipedia

www.artresearchcentergroup.org

Gosia Koscielak, Artist Statement

​ECO-Social, ECO-Digital, Post-Organic, Digital Organic, Virtual Unism, Minimalism, Constructivism

The idea of the eco - social sculpture integrates my concepts of spatial stimulations and sculpture taken to infinity with broader aspects of scientific and artistic activity. It represents a new concept of an eco - digital environment and a new relationship between the viewer and the nature - a new digital organic / post-organic. Eco - social sculptures connect natural and social sciences with art and aesthetics. Eco - social sculptures are philosophical-artistic-socio-cultural-scientific actions.

My work proposes a free flow between the digital and the organic. I use many different traditional and digital media - including virtual reality, video projections, laser drawing projections, and digital photography - as vehicles to express infinity in sculpture/space and to make visible the flow of energy in space. By placing digital media in the actual environment, I create a new experience of sculpture as an infinite energy form, of time and space integrating as a harmonious whole new habitat. I use the medium of light and projection to create new connections, between actual landscape (the organic) and the digital media.

Studies of the modernist Polish art theorists Władysław Strzemiński (Unism) and Henryk Stażewski (Polish Constructivism), along with the theories of Joseph Beuys and Paul K. Feyrabend have influenced my concept of the Virtual Unism and eco-social sculptures since 1994.

In my eco-social sculptures I represent the constant flow of digital and organic elements in space into infinity; I reveal their constant fluid transformation, from digital to organic, and from organic to the digital reconstruction of the micro and macro cosmos.

Creation lies in successive reduction aiming towards the unity of a system that in its most extreme form leads to the objective unity of world and art expanding to the 3D and the total unification of an art work with its environment: human - sculpture - space - infinity. Following Beuys' theory, eco-social sculptures are expanding the concept of art: art = man = creativity = science. Eco-social sculptures function in a much broader scope. Art is becoming a part of the research that can lead to the new developmental model integrating environmental, economic, socio-cultural and ethical sustainability. Eco-social sculptures that use digital media rejuvenate and stimulate the resources of natural organisms (ecosystems), the single organism (the human being), and the social organism (humanity). Eco-social sculptures are open for new scientific theories which can be integrated with new ideas, habits, and parts of culture, bringing positive aspects of nature that encourage us to remember nature's power of change and to reconsider the laws of Nature: "...when approached in different ways, nature gives differing answers..." as Paul K. Feyrabend stated.