On Saturday, April 21 at 3pm, Plug In ICA Executive Director and curator will give a guided tour of our spring solo exhibitions, Białystok by Poland-based Winnipeg artist Przemek Pyszczek and Shit-baby and the Crumpled Giraffe by Guatemalan artist Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa.

Both Pyszczek and Ramírez-Figueroa’s exhibitions center corporeal and psychological experiences related to childhood, with formal references to everyday objects and behavioural learning.

These presentations mark Pyszczek’s first major Canadian solo exhibition, and the first presentation of Ramírez-Figueroa’s work in Winnipeg.

Białystok and Shit-baby and the Crumpled Giraffe run from March 31-June 10, 2018. All our programming is free to the public. Everyone welcome!

Przemek Pyszczek: Białystok
March 31 to June 10, 2018

Colourful hues of hand brushed steel-poles create two centralized geometric form in Białystok – Przemek Pyszczek’s first solo exhibition in Canada. Heavily influenced by the architectural and civic structures from his birth town Białystok in Poland, Pyszczek builds a colourful, sprawling and unified sculpture that simultaneously captures a conformity and resistance to public housing infra-structures in Communist Poland, which turned from grey into an explosion of colour post the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Przemek Pyszczek is a Polish born, Winnipeg raised artist. After living in Berlin for the last eight years, he has relocated to rural Poland to continue his artistic research. Through architecturally inspired sculptures, installations and paintings Pyszczek’s work traces Poland’s transition since the fall of the Iron Curtain and also serves as an ongoing journey to rediscover his own past. He obtained his Bachelor of Environmental Design from the University of Manitoba in 2007. Pyszczek’s work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions, most recently presenting a solo exhibition at Galerie Derouillon, Paris. His work has been included in Forever Never Comes, Museo Archeologico e d’Arte della Maremma, Grosseto, Italy; 1989 Belenius, Stockholm; Sandomir, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles; Industrius, Window Gallery, Winnipeg; Building Systems, Berthold Pott, Cologne; and Corporalitas, Open Forum, Berlin.

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa: Shit-Baby and The Crumpled Giraffe
March 31 to June 10, 2018

Shit-Baby and the Crumpled Giraffe is a rare sculptural presentation of Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa’s characteristic penchant towards humour, abjection, and performance as he transforms bodily action into object form. For his solo exhibition at Plug In ICA, Ramírez-Figueroa immerses the viewer in a theatrical space where the fantastical meets a corporeal reality. He sets a stage through a series of sculptural forms painstakingly constructed out of Styrofoam, revealing an imaginary and infantile world.
Nafus Ramírez-Figueroa is a Guatemalan and Canadian artist. Working in sculpture, performance, video, installation and printmaking, Ramírez-Figueroa’s work is grounded in mechanisms and conditions of colonialism worldwide, with specific investment in Guatemalan history. Receiving ongoing support from Corpus (2015-present), Ramírez-Figueroa has engaged in a series of performances that he describes as an “attempt to exhaust my interest into the Guatemalan Civil War”. The weight of his subjects is often tempered by a playful material sensibility, forays into childhood, dreams, fantasy and the complexity of embodiment. He holds a BFA from Emily Carr University, Vancouver with a specialization in media art, and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has garnered international acclaim, with notable inclusions in Viva Arte Viva, 57th Venice Biennale 2017; Incerteza viva, 32nd São Paulo Biennale, 2016; Burning Down the House, 10th Gwangju Biennale, 2014 and in 2016, he was a resident artist at DAAD, in Berlin. He also has strong ties to Canada, where his work was featured on the cover of FUSE Magazine in 2013 and in 2018-19 Figueroa will present three major solo exhibitions in Canada, at Grunt Gallery, Vancouver; the Audain Gallery, Vancouver; and Plug In ICA, Winnipeg.

For full curatorial texts see:
BIałystok: https://plugin.org/exhibitions/2018/przemek-pyszczek-bialystok
Shit-Baby and the Crumpled Giraffe: https://plugin.org/exhibitions/2018/naufus-ramirez-figueroa-shit-baby-and-crumpled-giraffe

Plug In ICA extends our heartfelt gratitude to our generous donors, artists, valued members, and dedicated volunteers. You make a difference.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program.

Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/support or by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org