The results of the 5th edition of the Outdoor Gallery of the City of Gdansk Competition
22 February–24 March 2013
Łaźnia Centre for Contemporary Art
Ul. Jaskolcza 1
80-767 Gdansk, Poland
Opening hours: Tuesday–Sunday 12–6pm,Thursday 12–8pm
Wednesday free admission
T + 48 58 305 40 50
www.outdoorgallerygdansk.eu
www.laznia.pl
The Outdoor Gallery of the City of Gdansk is a long-term, international project realized by Łaźnia Centre for Contemporary Art aiming to create a permanent collection of works of art in public space. Projects assigned for realisation are chosen by a jury in regularly announced, closed, international competitions. This time the Outdoor Gallery has left the borders of the revitalized Lower Town district for a while and focused on a different area of Gdansk.
The 5th edition was realized in cooperation with the municipal corporation Pomorskie Metropolitan Rail S.A. who was the organizer of the competition. Within the competition, chosen artists were to design a graphic pattern for the walls of railway stops of the Pomorskie Metropolitan Rail (PKM), which will connect Lech Walesa Airport with Gdansk Wrzeszcz and the Kashubia region. The artistic graphics made in the form of illuminated perforations of the platform shelters’ walls will give an exceptional character to each eight stops of the PKM, creating at the same time some extraordinary, aesthetical and architectonical features to the whole new line of the metropolitan railway.
The international jury decided that the work of Anna Waligórska from Gdansk was the best amongst all the competition entries. The winner received the prize of 5.000 Euros and her project will be implemented within the biggest infrastructural investment of Pomorskie Voivoidship. The Jury also awarded two second prices ex aequo to Hans Peter Kuhn from Germany and Andrea Mastrovito from Italy for their outstanding works. The other artists who participated in the final stage of the competition were Kim Schoenstadt (USA), Lisa Ryter (USA), Mariusz Waras (Poland), Metaform and SUMO (Luxembourg).
All of the submitted projects were very diverse, but all coherent to the conditions of the call for entries. After a thorough examination of all proposals, the jury unanimously decided to give the first prize to the submission by Anna Waligórska. The jury was convinced by this project due to a unique conjunction of aesthetic and informational approaches combined with a strong artistic statement. The project goes along with the lightness of the new modern architecture of the train stations, but at the same time dissolves the soberness of the structure with organic imagery. Furthermore, it meets the needs of travelers for orientation by appointing numbers to each station and integrating them into highly recognizable over all images. An indispensable part of this submission is also a highly sophisticated lighting system: it has a signal function by announcing the approach of trains to the station, both in form of light columns and ceiling illumination.
The jury assigned the second prize equally to projects by Hans Peter Kuhn and by Andrea Mastrovito. The project by Hans Peter Kuhn, Breakthrough, stood out by creating a three-dimensional artwork involving the interior space of the train station. It converted the main characteristic of the walls, the perforation of the 12-meter high metal sheets, into a humorous game with penetrating neon light sticks. The project by Andrea Mastrovito has a strong narrative and poetic aura and seduces through its use of historical moments of the City of Gdansk and the surrounding region, referring to the “Machina Coelestis” by Johannes Hevelius.
The works were judged by an international jury: Adam Budak (Curator, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington), Jadwiga Charzynska (Director of Łaźnia Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdańsk), Jacek Dominiczak (lecturer at Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk), Julia Draganovic (art historian, curator, Modena, Italy), Enrico Lunghi (Director of Mudam Luxembourg, Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxemburg), Bettina Steinbruegge (curator, Forum Expanded Berlinale, Berlin) and Norbert Weber (member of the international expert board, Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art in Riga, Latvia).
The exhibition presenting the results of the competition is on till 24 March 2013.
Curator: Jadwiga Charzynska
Project Coordination: Anna Szynwelska
Press Contact: Katarzyna Stenczyk, k.stenczyk [at] laznia.pl
