As You Can See: Polish Art Today
February 14–June 1, 2014
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
ul. Emilii Plater 51
00-124 Warsaw
Poland
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday noon–8pm
Admission free
As You Can See: Polish Art Today is the first show of current Polish art spanning such range for more than a decade. It centers around important works, attitudes, and themes commented on by visual artists over recent years. The exhibition was designed as a guidebook facilitating the journey across the territory of current art phenomena. It focuses on a specific time and place, and is being held at a rather specific moment: several years after Polish art stabilised its position internationally, and simultaneously to the process of Polish artistic institutions becoming professionalised and rather radical. The current set of circumstances seems to be a dream come true for previous generations of artists, whose presence in the field of art often tied in with a struggle for the shape and form of the art institution, and for the artist’s position in society. The situation itself, however, does not resolve all problems: paradoxically, it leads to the creation of new tensions between institutions and artists, and artists and audiences, respectively.
The exhibition focuses on how artists define their social role and obligations to a viewer, and how they negotiate their relations with institutions. As You Can See: Polish Art Today is a review of forms of seeing and perception, of desire, of being together and being alone, of understanding reality, and of relating to the past and future. The exhibition relates both to the artists’ private space and developing relations with objects of everyday use or with architecture, and to the—ever-unconquered—territory of social change, to attempts at modifying the world with tools of art put to use.
Throughout the exhibition, the Emilia pavilion (the museum temporary venue) shall be gazing at the city with huge eyes wide open, an object of unique anthropomorphisation (Paulina Ołowska’s glass paintings in a reference to Jerzy Kolecki’s posters). The exhibition centres around what you can see, on how you see it, and on what becomes visible through and in art.
The exhibition is curated by Sebastian Cichocki and Łukasz Ronduda.
The artists: Paweł Althamer, Ewa Axelrad, Mirosław Bałka, Tomasz Baran, Wojciech Bąkowski, Billy Gallery, Tymek Borowski, Borowski & Śliwiński, Piotr Bosacki, Paweł Bownik, Bracia, Olaf Brzeski, Michał Budny, Rafał Bujnowski, Agnieszka Brzeżańska, Attila Csörgő, Oskar Dawicki, Wojciech Doroszuk, Goldex Poldex (presented by Jan Simon), Aneta Grzeszykowska, Piotr Janas, Łukasz Jastrubczak, Ewa Juszkiewicz, Jerzy Kolecki (presented by Paulina Ołowska), Tomasz Kowalski, Katarzyna Krakowiak, Agnieszka Kurant, Robert Kuśmirowski, Norman Leto, Zbigniew Libera, Michał Łagowski, Krzysztof Maniak, Katharina Marszewski, Honorata Martin, Krzysztof Mężyk, Gizela Mickiewicz, Katarzyna Mirczak, Anna Molska, Edmund Monsiel (presented by Łukasz Jastrubczak), Mikołaj Moskal, Magdalena Moskwa, New Roman, Marzena Nowak, Paulina Ołowska, Igor Omulecki, Witek Orski, Sławomir Pawszak, Agnieszka Polska, Agnieszka Polska & Witek Orski, Cezary Poniatowski, Katarzyna Przezwańska, Wojciech Puś, Joanna Rajkowska, Bianka Rolando, Daniel Rycharski, Mateusz Sadowski, Wilhelm Sasnal, Jadwiga Sawicka, Maciej Sieńczyk, Janek Simon, Slavs and Tatars, Jan Smaga, Konrad Smoleński, Monika Sosnowska, Łukasz Surowiec, Michał Szlaga, Iza Tarasewicz, Piotr Uklański, Aleksandra Waliszewska, Aleksandra Wasilkowska, Jakub Woynarowski, Piotr Wysocki & Dominik Jałowiński, Anna Zaradny, Zenek (presented by Jan Gryka), Jakub Julian Ziółkowski, Artur Żmijewski
