Making Use: Life in Postartistic Times / Bread and Roses: Artists and the Class Divide / Why We Have Wars: The Art of Modern-Day Outsiders

Making Use: Life in Postartistic Times
The exhibition addresses one of the fundamental postulates of twentieth-century avant-garde movements: the mutual penetration or even fusion of art and everyday life.

An engagement with the status and competence of the individuals and collectives who work in postartistic times animates this project. In a world that requires a redefinition of the individual’s obligations to the community and the new global challenges of migration, economic crisis, armed conflicts, and environmental threats—multifarious questions emerge. How can artistic competence achieve an impact on reality? Does this always have to materialize as an artwork? What role can the museum play in a situation where art radiates to non-artistic environments, and in so doing, loses the characteristics that distinguish it as art?

The exhibition Making Use: Life in Postartistic Times will develop over the show’s duration, reaching its ultimate form on the closing date. During this time, the museum will function as an information center devoted to practices with a high coefficient of art, shifting the focus from the artwork to reports and documentation from other fields including ecology, political activism, and religion. Nearly one hundred participants have been invited to contribute to this project: artists (both active and those who have withdrawn from the field of art), activists, "patainstitutions," free universities, and theorists.

http://makinguse.artmuseum.pl/

Bread and Roses: Artists and the Class Divide
Presenting works of 35 artists, the show takes as its historical point of departure the economic and social transition that has occurred during the last fifty years: from the political upsurge of 1968 to the modern-day turmoil stirred by the protests of the outraged movement, the precariat, and Occupy.

The exhibition formulates a question about the way artists define their status and position in the realm of soaring economic inequalities: the possibility to reconcile dreams of social justice with the need of artistic freedom and autonomy. At the same time, it highlights the tension between an artist’s ambivalent affiliation with the intellectual or financial elite, and their responsibility to the rest of society.

With works by: Jacek Adamas, Iván Argote, Art Workers Coalition, Brace Brace, Jesse Darling, Debora Delmar Corp., Deterritorial Support Group, Andrea Fraser, Nicolás Guagnini, Núria Güell, Rafał Jakubowicz, Christian Jankowski, Tobias Kaspar, Zofia Kulik, Gerard Kwiatkowski, Leigh Ledare, Zbigniew Libera, Michał Łagowski, Magdalena Malinowska, Adrián Melis, Metahaven, Marta Minujín, Teresa Murak, Daniela Ortiz, Zygmunt Piotrowski, Józef Robakowski, Daniel Rycharski, Georgia Sagri, Cindy Sherman, Santiago Sierra, Łukasz Surowiec, Christopher Kulendran Thomas, Gavin Turk, and Andrew Norman Wilson. Additionally, Renzo Martens presents: Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs des Plantations Congolaise.

http://breadandroses.artmuseum.pl/

Why We Have Wars: The Art of Modern-Day Outsiders
The exhibition presents works by fourteen artist-outsiders who operate outside the art world—without a degree in arts and without affiliation to institutions and the market. They are also outsiders in the traditional understanding of the term: individualists, perceived as “different” for various reasons, who often live on the margins of the society. These are strong artistic personalities for whom art is an existential must, a tool that allows them to comment on reality and to protest against it.

The exhibition presents these voices of dissent: politics, living conditions, gender roles, and mass media are all considered. The practice of contestation developed by outsiders inspires reflection on what it means to be critical today, especially with regard to art and the institution. Critical approaches in contemporary Polish art have lost their significance in comparison with the 1990s, while the museum is confronted by the question of to what extent they are open and democratic spaces. The show not only provides insight into artistic strategies and the viewpoints of members of social groups other than art academy graduates, but also demonstrates the major emancipatory role of artistic practice.

http://outsiders.artmuseum.pl/

Further press information and contact: 
prasa@artmuseum.pl / www.prasa.artmuseum.pl