The Power Plant

Podwórka captures six groups of neighbourhood youth as they play in seemingly deserted yards, offering an intimate portrait of daily life in Lód´z, Poland. Shot with a fixed camera, this single-channel video projection highlights American artist Sharon Lockhart’s concern for the interrelationship between the still and the moving image.

Evolving from past works for which Lockhart has entered into a community to document its inhabitants – such as Pine Flat (2006), the result of three years spent in a small town in the Sierra Nevada – Podwórka evidences the artist’s nuanced anthropological gaze as she represents both individual and collective identities. The work’s meditative pace and absence of defined narrative affords Lockhart’s subjects a sense of freedom that also extends to the viewers, who are encouraged to imagine stories for the children portrayed, beyond the space of the screen.

Spring 2010 Program Guide