Skulenie, 2003 Charcoal on potographic backdrop paper, fragment;
85 x 105 inches. Courtesy of the Remy Toledo Gallery and the artist. Photo: Herman Feldhaus.
Biography
Through drawing, performance, video, and installation, New York-based Polish artist Monika
Weiss creates environments that relate to the body and to the space it inhabits between biology and culture. In her drawings, an anonymous, alienated
silhouette appears, posturing in undefined states of waiting, or reacting to the unknown. In her performative installations, the viewer encounters scenes
of repetition and ritual, counterpoised by projected video documenting the action. In one of the Weiss' recent installation series Ennoia the artist
immerses herself for several hours inside a water-filled chalice, while a projected image of the immersion and the underwater sounds mirror her action.
Such works combine the qualities of endurance and duration with symbolic form reminiscent of medieval paintings and with the formal simplicity of
Minimalism. The artist recent New York exhibition Intervals (2004) was presented at the Remy Toledo Gallery, New York, together with Carolee
Schneemann's Infinite Kisses II. Weiss' current solo exhibitions in 2005 include Phlegethon-Milczenie at the Inter-Galerie, Potsdam (Berlin)
and Monika Weiss: Performing the Drawing at the Galerie Samuel Lallouz, Montreal, and upcoming is Five Rivers: Sculpture, Drawing and Performance
at the Lehman College Art Gallery, New York, 2005. In 2006 her installation Ennoia will be a part of You Won't Fell a Thing at the Kunstlerhaus
Bethanien, Berlin.
"Monika Weiss' way of operating at the edge is to expose her boundary, her envelope, that is, her skin, to continuous radical feedback and performative
definition." - George Quasha, Conceiving Body: Remarks on the Side/Elytron (spirit and body are only two wings) - Monika Weiss: Vessels, 2004.
"Weiss makes drawings with her body, leaving a trail or trace of her movements, revealing the presence of the living body of the artist." - Pennina Barnett,
Performing the Drawing, 2003.
Monika Weiss received her Master's degree in painting and drawing from the Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw in 1990. She has been a visiting artist at
universities in Europe and the United States, including The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, 2002; University of Maryland, 1999; Georgia State
University School of Art and Design, 1997-98; Spelman College, 1996; and Strzeminski Academy of Fine Arts, 1994-95. Solo exhibitions include Nexus
Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta,1997; BMB Gallery, Amsterdam, 1993 and 1996; and Galerie Espace Degree, Luxembourg, 1995. Her works are part of the
permanent collection of the Albertina Museum, Vienna, BMB Gallery in Amsterdam, Galerie Samuel Lallouz in Montreal and the Hudson Valley Center for
Contemporary Art, New York. Recent exhibitions in New York include installation Ennoia in collaboration with Stephen Vitiello at Diapason Gallery.
More recently in New York her works presented by Art in General, the Whitney Museum of American, and El Museo del Barrio's. In 2004 Weiss' works were
presented by the Chelsea Art Museum, NY in her first U.S. monographic exhibition. She is currently a member of the New York-based artists' and
curators' organization Nomads + Residents.
