Blood of a Poet - a unique cycle of interrelated video art features - opened last year’s retrospective of Lech Majewski films and videos at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Rejecting dialogue and chronology, it marks an innovative approach to traditional film narration. The simultaneous flow of images, events and visual associations creates a cross-section of a human mind.

The elaborate project, which originally began as a cycle of seven short films, grew consistently during the process of realization. In the end Blood of a Poet is comprised of 33 short films and a series of photographs, which are themselves original and autonomous works.

Majewski’s newest work tells the story of a young poet at odds with himself and the world. The struggling, young mind is part of a motif that resurfaces from earlier Majewski works, such as Basquiat (he wrote the original story) and Wojaczek, visually representing and questioning the existence of creative consciousness and the psychological role-playing that occurs between “childhood” and “adulthood.”

After the death of his mother – although the possibility of “after” is relative always in Blood of a Poet – the young poet finds himself shut away in a psychiatric ward. The short films that compose the work show the poet’s memories of childhood unfolding before him. From his isolation he sees his mother, his violent father and his father’s lovers. Through this process of remembering, the cycle absolves any traces of formal dialogue and chronological narration. Even the situation of memory within the past is held in contention.

The collected short films themselves overlap and communicate visually and thematically with one another, and continually ask the viewer to develop a new method of interpretation and to conceive of new narrative intersections. The viewer can depend upon his own creative capacities to find a way through the labyrinthine structure of Blood of a Poet.

Presented at the 52nd International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia 2007 by Ars Cameralis Silesiae Superioris and The Polish Film Institute the work can be seen in Teatro Junghans on Giudecca. Some of the video art features will be shown on Campo San Pantalon 3711 as well (June 6th through September 30th).

Lech Majewski is a poet, filmmaker and video artist. His video works have been shown in the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris; Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; Seattle Art Museum; Palagraziussi, Venice; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Museo des Belles Artes, Buenos Aires and The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

His films have been presented in festivals in Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Toronto, Rome, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Chicago, London, Mar del Plata, Barcelona, Miami, Jerusalem, Moscow, Houston, and Montreal, receiving numerous prizes.

The Lech Majewski Retrospective that originated in New York at MoMA is touring the United States and in July/August 2007 will travel to The National Gallery in Washington D.C.

(find more on www.lechmajewski.com)