Anna Godzina
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Hans Theys
A Room of One’s Own (Another Space Electric)
About Anna Godzina’s work
Anna Godzina (b. 1990 in Chișinău, Moldova) creates minimalistic, kinetic sculptures and installations that sprinkle tiny sounds through space. They consist of found objects such as electric engines, parts of music instruments, tubes and pipes, tiny pebbles, wood, metal, bolts, strings, cogwheels, belts, glass bulbs, water, sawblades etcetera. Slowly they move and almost imperceptibly their flowery additions to space, reshape, energizise or unfold it.
In 2016 she reached a large public with penetrating performances and videos published on YouTube. In 2016 she also made her first kinetic sculpture, which immediately caught my attention because of the rare encounter between functionality and poetics, the non repetitive movement and the keen sound. Gradually new sculptures appeared, always with new materials, movements and sounds. In September 2019 some of them were combined into a poetic installation at the gallery of Marion De Cannière (Antwerp).
A couple of years ago, Godzina studied film making. Creating cinema, however, lost its attraction for her. Classical cinema, that is, for it is our intimate conviction that she went on making films but with other means. Don’t we recognize the repetitive sound of a projector? Or the slapping sound of the film strip at the end of a projection?
Vaguely we remember a blind emperor who had a large garden designed to listen to when it rained. And indeed traditional Chinese gardens were provided with Rain Pavillions, from whence the owner could listen to the ever changing garden revealed to him or her by the ever changing winds and raindrops.
Thus speak to us the tinkling sculptural proposals of Godzina, strewn through space, making it visible to us in a new way.
Simultaneously, however, their delicate but functional structures and elegant movements pull us into a world of tactile and visual pleasure, childhood memories and fantasy.
Montagne de Miel, 24 July 2020