Antje Majewski and Paweł Freisler have been collaborating on many projects since 2010. As part of the project and exhibition “Flow”, exhibited in Gallery EL, Antje Majewski decided to bring her copy of Paweł Freisler’s “The Steel Egg” back (or forward) to Elbląg. Antje and the Egg joined Agnieszka Brzeżańska and Ewa Ciepielewska and their friends on a trip by boat from Gdansk to Elbląg.
The original Wzorzec (wzór) stalowy jajka kurzego / Steel standard (sample) of a chicken egg (1967) was made at the Zamech Mechanical Factory between the 2nd and 3rd Biennale of Spatial Forms in Elbląg, 1967-69. The Egg returns to where it was made, but this exact copy is there for the first time. On Paweł Freisler’s request, The Egg is presented not in Gallery EL, but in the exhibition “What’s new? Elbląg in the 1960s” in Muzeum Archeologiczno-Historycznym w Elblągu. It’s return saves an important moment in Polish cultural history and heritage and opens it up for a NEW yet to come.
Freisler was an invited artist-in-residence in the industrial city of Elbląg, Poland, where he developed The Egg, a work originally titled Standard Egg. The site is the mechanical factory Zamech, where Freisler collaborated with workers. The Egg was a comprehensive study of the production of an ideal form. Freisler investigated the steel, ideal shape of a hen’s egg, in a perfect mimicry of both the everyday industrial and scientific knowledge worlds: At first, he looked for the most “beautiful” egg together with the ladies who worked at the factory canteen, then he learned how to operate the lathe and milling machine under the supervision of the foreman in the mechanical department, until he finally made the perfect stainless steel model, a standard egg that would serve as a point of comparison for other eggs in order to evaluate their quality and conformity with reference to the norm.Once completed, the standard egg remained for the most part unseen; instead, it spread through hearsay, becoming a legend. Freisler spread the mystery of its production through stories and rumors; like the one about an alleged letter of response from the measurement authorities in Sèvres, for example. He authorized friends and professional actors to invent and tell more stories about the standard egg. Antje Majewski’s „Journey of the EGG“ is one such story. (Text by Antje Majewski / Susanne Titz)
