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Gosia Koscielak Goes Global

Cultures and technologies commingle on Bosworth Street in Bucktown.

Monday Dec 25, 2006.     By Joanne Hinkel

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From the front windows at Gosia Koscielak Studio & Gallery, you can almost feel the cars and big rigs whizzing by on the Kennedy Expressway. Though she could have picked a space in the West Loop, this proximity to the highway was what sold Koscielak on the place: the perfect environs for a place that connected cultures and ideas from different parts of the world through art.

On a recent December night, the gregarious Gosia Koscielak, with honey hair flowing over a black outfit and purple scarf, talked to me with an almost girlish enthusiasm for the possibilities for exhibitions and cultural exchanges.

Since moving to the U.S. from Poland in 1993 to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Time Arts program, Koscielak has exhibited as a conceptual artist in her own right, taught as a lecturer at area schools, and all the while been devoted to curating art ventures that connect American to Poland, bringing such artists such as Ed Paschke and Frances Whitehead to Poland and producing shows highlighting Polish-American artists here. And considering that Chicago's Polish population is second only to Warsaw's in number, her perspective is an important one.

You decided to run an art gallery in Chicago because:
I always wanted to bring back this kind of activity to the United States. I was getting a few projects in different places here, like the project at the Hyde Park Art Center in 2001 ("Transcultural Visions: Polish American Contemporary Art"). I thought it would be good to, instead of making segments, to show an entire concept. I thought it's good to start my own place and to invite other artists and to continue with this work.

To have local discussions around a global context, this was a key idea for me when I started the gallery. Technological media is also very fascinating to me. These things, technology and global issues, reflect the complexity of the twenty-first century. I think it's important to talk about the times we are living in.

Are people resistant to the idea that technology can be a part of art?
The issue is how to collect new media works. We are used to art being about objects. New media works are more ephemeral. How do you create collections of new media? There is a group of collectors who are thinking about it. They are trying to find a way. But it's a problem that's not solved.

You select art that:
I select art that has an impact on me. It's purely personal and a private selection process. If I see work and it's really strong to me then I like to show it.

If we remember one thing about your gallery it's:
I think that people who visit will get to another level of art comprehension. You'll go on to the fourth dimension.

When you're not at your gallery you're checking out art at:
I like to surf the internet. I like to visit museums, artist's studios, and to talk with artists and to have direct contact with artists, then the ideas for how to curate their show start coming. You can't treat artists as objects. There needs to be an intellectual click with the artists I work with; it needs to be personal.

An artist we should know is:
Definitely Fern Valfer, Susan Senseman. I would recommend Annette Barbier. I also think Ben Chang who works in the virtual reality program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago...I want to go on and on!

On your walls at home you have:
It would be more like in my DVD player at home (laughs, then smiles...) At home I have a collection of international artists who I worked with in Europe. Many of them were part of the neo-geo movement there. And of course the new media art as well.

You would tell artists interested in the gallery scene to:
They will send me their CD and DVD. Just drop me off your work that's all. If I like what I see, then I will call definitely.