Dennis Hollingsworth

Raster Haircut

I met the Raster guys when they did a stint at Rental Gallery LA. They're from Warsaw, Poland and my friends who have been there tell me that it's supercool city. Funny, edgy and comfortable in their own shoes; they've been going strong showing at too many art fairs and generally working as if their lives depended on it. Here's what they have to say about their "Haircut" that opened at Joel Mesler's Rental Gallery NY this week:

"Raster Haircut" is the first presentation in New York City of the Warsaw-based Raster Gallery.

In contradiction to the Polish saying, "Don't split hairs in four", the exhibition is composed of works by four artists: Rafal Bujnowski, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Przemek Matecki and Jan Smaga. Most of them are recent works, created or selected especially for this exhibition. The exhibition does not have a subject - instead it has a main motif: hair. Hair as a characteristic, organic structure (often difficult to disentangle!), but also hair as a coiffure, a stylized form, a carefully designed shape, and also a sign of identity. "Raster Haircut", though, is not a proposalof yet another style or fashion, but rather an attempt to describe our artistic identity. "RasterHaircut" is not only a specific "hair-do", but above all it is our special way of seeing, which sometimes requires respectfully stooping down to examine every single "hair", whatever seems marginal and petty, and which at first glance is not always visible, even though - as with hair - we live with it every day. Thus "Raster Haircut" is simply a hair stylist's mirror, in which, as on the palm of the hand, one sees an unfolding process: sense slowly emerging from chaos, the promise of a new order.