Maurycy Gomulicki is a Polish artist, performer, writer, collector and designer with his base in Mexico. Out of a range of exciting projects he is working on, I would like to introduce his Pink Not Dead! project today. So far he presented the phenomena of ‘Pink’ in all shapes, shades, scents and sounds in two major exhibitions (one in Warsaw, one in Mexico city), a Pink Blog collects imagery of living with PINK on a daily basis and Maurycy doesn’t seem to stop anywhere when it comes to his favorite color and fetish. He even designed a line of PINK COFFINS as a part of the exhibition and a whole PINK SEXSHOP CHAIN (about 10 shops already) together with Jorge Covarrubias. Let’s see why he is so obsessed with PINK and what’s behind this seemingly artificial-happy surface!

Written by Uleshka

Maurycy, please quickly introduce yourself and what you do.

I’ve been educated in art and I work in that field but I do not see art as a goal itself, but rather as a space and opportunity for communication and manifestation of ideas and fascinations.

I am constantly dancing on the thin line between high and popular culture. I believe I have some ability to point people’s attention to phenomena and to create cultural blends. Coming from a melancholic background (meaning – being Polish), I somehow naturally grew hedonistic. I like life, it’s an expansive nature. I can’t get enough of it.

What is the general concept of your Pink Not Dead! project?

The best way to understand the concept is to read the Pink Statement. But basically Pink Not Dead! is a multidimensional project focusing on an investigation and evaluation of “Pink” as a phenomena and category itself.

On the one hand, “Pink” gets explored if you ask for paradise, pleasure and happiness and its echoes, distortions and phantasmagoria. On the other hand, Pink Not Dead! is pointing in a wider sense at something that is seen as very simple, even superficial (which is so very easily accepted or negated depending on the geo-cultural predispositions) but showing that its nature is richer and more complex than it seems.

The overall intention of the project – apart from creating an experience and building an archive – was to provoke a specific dynamic amongst the users and participants: to activate their mental emotive Pink Drive and to awaken their Pink Subconscious.

How did you express Pinkness then? What sort of artists participated and what art works got developed out of it?

I liked the idea to expand the project on different levels. For example, if I found or designed a pink flute, I decided that it would be much more fruitful to invite a flutist to perform “pink music” on it, than to simply have it as an “object trouvée” together with other pink objects. This dynamic in mind, artists, performances, objects and new ways of using these kept coming and building up – this never stopped.

The circle of invited participants was much wider than you would usually imagine for such a visual art project: we had scientists, philosophers, psychologist, writers, comic drawers and fashion designers amongst other artists.

Please tell us about your two main events, the one in Garash Galeria (Mexico City, January to February 2006) and the exhibition at CCA Ujazdowki Castle (Warsaw, April throughout May 2006)! How were these events perceived?

Both shows were accompanied by a series of events involving lectures, movie projections, dancing lessons and Pink Parties. The dynamic itself was interesting: the first one in Mexico generated an intensive experience during the quiet period at the beginning of the New Year that is usually full of expectations.

The follow-up in Poland worked strongly with the context of the winter ending and abundant experience for spring. After those long cold months, people were thirsty for life.

There is something like “Zeitgeist” (spirit of time) around “Pink” and similar projects seemed to start simultaneously: in September 2005 “The exposed color: Pink” a project curated by Barbara Nemitz was shown in Tokyo. At the same time Suczyroz – an independent inititative of Polish street artists opened with a Pink Fotoblog involving a large community.

Give us a quick summary of the events: what did you do as performances? What was exhibited?

Anything from Sakura blossom during the show to a video from “King Spring”, a pink cabriolet ride in Warsaw on the opening day.

Dressed in pink clothes from my collection, beautiful young models were displayed together with other art pieces. During the show two parties and a catwalk by Carla Fernandez took place. Xavier Rodriguez performed the “Fuck The Shoe” performance and gave a series of experimental Latino dancing lessons.

Dorota Kobylinska had a lecture about the ‘Pink side of Psychology’. Philosophers Michal Herer and Benjamin Cope decided to give a Deleuzian lecture in the context of the Pink Not Dead! exhibition. Once a week a “Pink Movie” was presented with a short introduction by myself.

The mere exhibition changed in dimension (my pink mural grew up to 30 meters) and character. In Mexico we painted a colonial building with white stuccos in pink, which worked as some kind of wedding pastry combination. In Warsaw I converted the museum’s ‘White Cube’ into a ‘Pink Cube’.

How long have you been collecting pink works?

My first serious pink work was around 1996 – I built a Pink Cave in my basement, chained willing girls to a Giant Mushroom and took photographs as a souvenir… The next pieces were my Vaginette series in 1999. I am dying to install them in some Japanese Love Hotel…

Generally and blogwise: what do you find worth collecting – simply anything ‘Pink’, or does it have to be edgy, funny, erotic…?

Definitely not ‘anything Pink’ – I am seriously in conflict with the dynamics of mechanical collectionism.

But something particular, meaningful, beautiful, curious, absurd, different, and always strongly expressed!

The Pink Blog is a continuation of a series of Pink Mail Chains in which about 200 people participated. I am now transferring them into a more open forum. The blog is mostly in Polish, Spanish and English. Any contribution to the Pink Archive is welcome. This is a Pink Experiment.

Why are you doing all this? What do you get out of it?

For the sake of paradise and diversity, and because of my mental vices. Pink Not Dead! is a sort of rebel act which I find necessary right now. It gives me pleasure and satisfaction to build a naughty cultural nod. I keep being surprised about how fast and huge it expands.

Where do you see Pink Not Dead! in the future?

There is an invitation to Stockholm I find particularly interesting, because of the opportunity to experience Pink Snow…and the perfect Nordic girls are also promising!

I would love to illuminate the Red Square in Moscow and change it to a Pink one for one night, but I don’t know how easy that might be.

I already got accepted to illuminate Warsaw’s monumentally phallic Stalinist Palace of Culture, but I am still working on the funding.

The Pink Book is planned for the end of 2007 – the publishers and sponsors are already involved. I would like to move location once more and go to Asia with Pink. Maybe around the time of the book presentation, maybe during an expo or action… Could be Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong-Kong, Seoul, Bangkok. Who knows?

Thanks a lot, Maurycy! If you can’t get enough of Pink or want to check out some of the other stunning photography Maurycy is doing, here is his Flickr page!