HOW TO DRIVE

In June this year, we invited Katerina Moschou to cooperate with her project “How to drive”, co-published by ZOETROPE ATHENS and awarded a publishing grant by Polycopies & Co. The first, out-of-print edition of the publication was awarded the ArtsLibris Banc Sabadell Award 2023 (Barcelona 2023) and was shortlisted for the PhotoESPANA Best Photography Book Award (Madrid 2023). We will have even greater pleasure to present this summer an exhibition of Katerina’s photographs and sculptures at the FOTO-GEN Gallery.

“How to drive” takes place in Katerina’s father’s car repair shop in central Athens, where she grew up hearing about hard-to-find mechanical parts, the beauty of Italian car bodies and the life stories of their owners. Steeped in the atmosphere of the male-dominated automotive world, it explores a space that until recently was distant from women. She carefully observes the mechanical processes of driving a car, all the ritual activities and nuances accompanying driving a car, carefully observes the movement of her body, noting that the interaction between the body and the environment, as well as the body and parts of the car, creates a kind of choreography.

The entire exhibition space is a recreation of this gesture and is tactile. Photographs and objects also build a system that plays with what is visible and invisible. Lines and shapes make up synthetic sketches of car silhouettes, but the context of corporeality is still present. While driving a car, the person driving repeats a specific sequence of gestures almost unconsciously. Her body is fused with the vehicle’s equipment elements, which determine movements, but are also designed to correspond to the shape of the human figure. The body in the car is inscribed in a small closed space where it performs a rhythmic dance. Moschou translated it into a sequence in a photo book. It was developed in the exhibition space using a slide projector. Its method of operation, repetition and looping of images, and even the sounds it produces bring to mind what is happening in a car. Just like the mixture of specific synthetic fragrances present at the exhibition. All this together reminds us that driving a car is a complex relationship between what is visible, desired and disappearing.

Paweł Bąkowski

Curator: Paweł Bąkowski
Visual identification, motion: Olga Krzywiecka, Paweł Bąkowski
Accompanying program: Aleksandra Tews
Translations: Marek Balicki
Digital prints: QPrint
Exhibition realization: Michał Perucki

Honorary patronage: Embassy of Greece in Warsaw

Exhibition partner: Mood Scent Bar

Media patrons: Zoetrope Athens, Kwartalnik FOTOGRAFIA, Contemporary Lynx, TVP3 Wroclaw, Radio RAM, Radio Wrocław, Radio Wrocław Kultura, Miesięcznik Odra, Pismo Artystyczne Format

This project was co-financed
from the budget of Lower Silesia Voivodeship