Tentoonstellingen

TEGENPOLEN. Drieluik met Pools sociaal realisme 1945-1955, Pools design 1955-1968 en hedendaagse Poolse kunst

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A triptych of Polish art and design

This summer, the MMKA will feature a triptych of Polish art and design. The exhibit will display work from the country’s recent charged past along with contemporary Polish work. Poland is playing a key role in culturally redefining Europe. A new internationally oriented generation of Polish artists is currently shaking up the art world. On the one hand, the new guard looks back towards the Polish avant-garde from 1960 to 1980, and on the other, they seek a new identity of their own.

The three exhibitions that will take place at around the same time spotlight the social realism that was enforced in Polish art from 1945 to 1955, as well as Polish design from 1955 to 1968 which is little known in the west. The present day is embodied in the confrontational work of contemporary artist KatarzynaKorzyra.

Forward! Polish social realism 1945-1955

27 May - 3 September 2012

Postwar communist leaders in Poland disapproved of twentieth-century avant-garde art movements like cubism, surrealism, and abstraction. From 1949, every work of art had to be ‘national in its form and content.’ Polish artists were required to express themselves in a realistic style and present ideologically sanctioned themes such as labourers and farmers at work, the reconstruction of the country, portraits of Joseph Stalin or still-lifes. Warsaw’s National Museum has lent the MMKA for the exhibition the most significant paintings from its social realist collection. Complemented with a few key pieces from other Polish museums, this exhibition provides a look at the aesthetic norm imposed by the government from 1945-55, a view which has not been seen before outside of Poland.

The artists featured in Forward! include: Xawery Dunikowski, Eugeniusz Eibisch, Wojciech Fangor, Stanislaw Horno-Poplawski, Tadeusz Kantor, Aleksander Kobzdej, Helena Krajewska, Juliusz Krajewski, Alfred Lenica, Bronislaw Wojciech Linke, Zygmunt Radnicki, Kazimierz Sramkiewicz, Henryk Stazewski, Wladyslaw Strzeminski, Juliusz Studnicki, Wojciech Stanislaw Weiss, Romuald Kamil Witkowski, Marek Wlodarski, Józefa Wnukowa, and Jan Wodynski.

We want to be modern. Polish design 1955-1968

27 May - 3 September 2012

We Want to be Modern is the first Dutch exhibition of Polish design from the 1950s and ’60s. For the West, this is a little-known period in Polish (design) history. More than 200 objects are on display, including furniture, ceramics, and textiles. The exhibition investigates the importance of objects from daily life and how they gave shape to Polish identity. This was a rich period for Polish design, with colours, shapes and materials influenced by abstract art, organic forms, and Western designers like Alvar Aalto and Charles and Ray Eames. The objects are on loan from collections of the National Museum in Warsaw. We want to be modern features objects by Roman Modzelewski, Teresa Kruszewska, Maria Chomentowska, Jan Kurzątkowski, Czesław Knothe, and others.

Transgression. Katarzyna Kozyra. Contemporary Polish art

2 June - 16 Septembre 2012

The multimedia installations, videos and performances of Katarzyna Kozyra (1963) always elicit strong reactions in Poland. Her use of stuffed animals in Pyramid of Animals (1993), and the filming of their deaths, provoked national outrage. Physical deterioration, our preoccupation with surface appearances, and male and female forms are key subjects in this Polish artist’s controversial work. Using a hidden camera, she filmed undressed women of all ages at a public bathhouse (1997). Disguised as a boy with a mustache, she indecorously recorded bathing men in Men’s Bathhouse (1999); the installation received an honourable mention at the Venice Biënnale. In the video installation Punishment and Crime (2002), Kozyra explores the fascination with weapons at gun clubs, a fascination that sometimes crosses the line between sport and violence. In the video and photo series Lou Salome (2005), Kozyra plays the role of the German-Russian psychoanalyst Lou von Salomé. As a dominatrix, she drives a cart pulledby the kindred spirits of Nietzsche and Rilke, who are portrayed as dogs on leads. Kozyra belongs to a generation of critical artists who expose taboos, even those of the art world, through their work and hold them up for discussion, as her project Midgets reveals. She ‘disrupted’ the 2008 Berlin Biënnale with her Midget Gallery and a battalion of dwarves dressed in lederhosen to bring attention to the mixing of public and private interests and the commercialization of the art world. In her recent project Casting Kozyra challenges others to re-enact and experience moments from her own life history. Here she demonstrates how the media can be used for one to assume another identity and personality.

Katarzyna Kozyra lives in Warsaw and Berlin. She studied at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts Department of Sculpture.

Kozyra will give an artist’s talk on Sunday 3 June.

 ----------------------------------------- The MMKA is the museum for realism in the Netherlands