The Garden

The main character of Agnieszka Polska’s film is an artist who tells the story of how, after leaving his notes and sketches in Poland, he moved to Sweden, where he abandoned his art practice and began cultivating a garden. The narrator remains out of the frame, but occasionally we see his hands covered in a black gardening suit and gloves. The voice-over tells that there are 12,000 species of plants growing in the garden, detailing the various stages of plant life, the processes involved and the special techniques developed for seed selection, germination and planting. Unexpectedly, a gloved hand retrieves a mysterious black egg from the bushes, which, as the voice explains, turns out to be the model for a perfect steel chicken egg.

Narrative of Polska’s film is curiously similar to the life story of an enigmatic Polish artist Paweł Freisler. Active in the 1960s and 1970s, he moved to Sweden in 1976 and disappeared from the artistic scene. Artist Antje Majewski tells the story about Freisler’s egg:

“In 1968, Freisler had begun working with an egg that he had a precision instruments factory cast in steel on 14th August 1969, for the Laboratorium Sztuki Galerii EL. He initially called it Stalowy wzór jajka kurzego (Standard Chicken Egg Made of Steel). Shortly thereafter, this became Imperialny wzór jajka kurzego (Imperial Standard for a Chicken Egg), and today it is usually called Stalowe jajo (Steel Egg), or Das Ei or The Egg, respectively. Because the story of The Egg is still ongoing, its title is still “in the making” (Paweł Freisler). The Egg was not exhibited, but entrusted to people. Among others, the popular Polish actor Wiesław Gołas carried it around with him from February 1970 to February 1971 and had to show it upon demand; and it was brought to Paris, where Jean-Paul Belmondo took it for a cruise on the hood of his car.” (Source: http://www.antjemajewski.de/portfolio/freisler-splace-2010/#_ftn1)

The mysterious story of the egg is as enigmatic as Freisler’s other works. Although he has vanished from the art world, detailed accounts of his performances have occasionally reached various individuals in the art community. Only after checking the details did these accounts prove to be untrue, even if they were claimed to be first-hand. The Garden adds another plot line to the life story of an artist who mastered the mode of creating art while doing something else.