March 10–May 4, 2017
BWA Zielona Góra
al. Niepodległości 19
65-048 Zielona Góra
Arsenal Gallery
ul. A. Mickiewicza 2
15-222 Białystok
Poland
The multi-site exhibition Made in Blue Republic will be on view from March 10 through April 2, 2017 at BWA Zielona Góra (curator: Wojciech Kozłowski) and from March 17 through May 4, 2017 at the Arsenal Gallery, Białystok (curator: Monika Szewczyk).
The Polish-Canadian Blue Republic collective acquired international recognition for their interventions in both interior and urban spaces. With their exhibition Made in Blue Republic, they continue the development of their practice through the engagement of planetary and post-human thinking. This includes a series of projects operating in the ephemeral, absurdist and linguistic spheres including Tape Murals, Water Drawings and other spatial interventions, each work managing to tread the threshold separating object from environment with equal amounts of wit and care.
Made In Blue Republic comprises an expansive but precariously built environment, titled Speeding from Beautiful Infections, which encompasses ten years’ worth of found objects that provisionally establish multiple routes and trajectories throughout one of BWA Zielona Góra’s galleries. Each construction simultaneously leads and hems in the wandering viewer in an installation intended to mirror the impermanence of civilizing and civilizational constructs. This is further emphasized through Blue Republic’s ubiquitous “tape murals”—improvised drawings created with black masking tape, spread along the floor and walls, dividing, tracing and approaching the gallery’s architectural space as both medium and author.
Expanding upon the ephemeral nature of Tape Murals, site-specific land art series Water Drawings, shown in a video documentary at Białystok’s Arsenal Gallery, partially eludes the human sensorium by engaging the transformation of physical states in improvised performances where water is applied to the hot rock surfaces of Canada’s Georgian Bay. The installation Limited Activities rounds out the artists’ experiments with what they have dubbed the “trans-objects,” or matter that has been shredded, pulverised, evaporated and is thought to be destroyed.
Blue Republic’s prolific succession of anti-monumental installations and displacements uniquely frame contemporary discourses around embodied intelligence and hierarchies of form. They accomplish this primarily by interrogating their own status as artists, shifting between positions as authors and intermediaries. This is best underscored by their exhibition title, Made in Blue Republic where the use of “in” rather than “by” de-centers the artists’ authorship, suggesting that the environmental circumstances of the production and presentation of their work constitute a collaborative process of creation.
The Blue Republic are Anna Passakas and Radoslow Kudlinski. Their artistic research and exhibition practice focuses chiefly on site-specific and public interventions including installation, printed matter and performance-based work. Blue Republic took part in international projects forefronting anti-poverty education and activism in Brazil’s favelas and worked with inmates at the Ontario’s correctional system. They divide their time between Krakow, Poland and Toronto, Canada where they are represented by Georgia Scherman Projects.
Selected exhibitions include: 2013-14 Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture (Shenzhen/Hong Kong); DAAD Gallery (Berlin); Ludwig Forum for International Art (Aachen); CCA Ujazdowski Castle (Warsaw); Galleria D’Arte Moderna di Bologna (Italy); Galerie Julio Gonzales (Paris), Darling Foundry (Montreal, Canada), Oakville Galleries (Oakville, Canada), Doris McCarthy Gallery (Toronto, Canada)
Later this year Blue Republic will participate in Wanderlust, an exhibition on international action art at SUNY’s UB Art Galleries (Buffalo, New York), with Bas Jan Ader, Francis Alÿs, John Baldessari, Cardiff/Miller, Mona Hatoum, Ana Mendieta, Wangechi Mutu, Gabriel Orozco, and others.
BWA Zielona Góra is a municipal gallery presenting the newest tendencies in Polish contemporary art. The gallery was established in 1965, becoming the base for recurring nationwide exhibitions: Złote Grono (Golden Cluster, 1963–81), and Biennale Sztuki Nowej (Biennale of New Art, 1985–96). BWA has shown works by almost all renowned Polish artists.
The Arsenal Gallery is a municipal institution of culture presenting contemporary art. The gallery holds over 20 exhibitions per annum, in Poland and abroad. Projects tying in with Eastern and Central European countries have a special place in the Gallery’s programme—they show all tendencies in the contemporary art of these regions.
