Ellen Harvey: Ruins are More Beautiful

Curated by Ika Sienkiewicz-Nowacka
Laboratorium, Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland
September 7 – October 10, 2009

An empty exhibition that celebrates the renovation of Laboratorium (the Ujazdowski Castle complex’s only remaining original building for which Harvey created a project in 2003 when it was still in disrepair). The windows and doors in the new exhibition space were covered in plexi-glas mirrors hand-engraved with a drawing that located the new space in a tragic future where the adjacent Ujazdowski Castle (which was rebuilt in the 1970s) has been reduced to romantic forested ruins for a second time. Light sources behind the doors and daylight coming in through the windows create a drawing in light in which viewers see themselves in the otherwise empty space.