Images of the world
„Images of the world" – group exhibition
ul. Skałeczna 5, Kraków – 10.04.2017 – 10.05.2017
Opening: 10.04.2017, 5 pm
„Images of the world" – wystawa zbiorowa
Łukasz Huculak, Mirosław Kociński, Anna Kutera, Romuald Kutera, Anna Marchwicka, Marek Marchwicki, Yolanta Nikt, Zdzisław Nitka
ul. Skałeczna 5, Kraków – 10.04.2017 – 10.05.2017
Opening: 10.04.2017, 5 pm
The earliest images of the world that I recall are probably connected with Oborniki Śląskie. I can not now determine which one is the first: a pavement covered with fresh snow crunching under my boots, the red-tiled home, or any other of the dozens of detached images devoid now of context. This uncertainty gives me a slight concern – it would be good to know from which image the image of the world which I carry myself, or which carries me within itself, starts. This is important, because I feel that the structure of my memory, and even more, my identity, depends on my first memorised images of reality. Perhaps, without my conscious participation, these images bring some order to the chaos coming in a lifetime of experiences; they determine the specifics of my perception.
I’m talking about images, but it’s really a question of a comprehensive experience of the world that involves all the senses. And additionally, this experiencing the world is, after all, at the same time interpreting it – our senses and mind, even during infancy, are not disinterested. Perception is always associated with interpretation. We feel a subconscious need to understand, which is one of the ways of satisfying a wider need for security. When we come into the world, we find it as something finished and we start, day after day, to dive more and more into the language that resonates around us, in history and culture. All this determines the way in which we perceive and analyse the world, and the most elementary tool at our disposal is that we are just ourselves, armed with our individual sensitivity and imperfect and often unreliable senses.
The place I’m talking about, seems to have a special character. This town, situated twenty kilometres north of Wrocław, is one of those places that wake my astonishment, that are tangible proof that it is possible to embody an instance and give material existence to human vision and desires. It’s just a supposition, but one of those suppositions which are permanently etched into my consciousness, approaching the limit of absolute certainty. I suppose, then, that in the early 19th century, Karl Wolfgang Schaubert imagined or simply sensed, what this small village lost in the wooded hills of the mounds of moraine, which later were later called the Cat Mountains, could turn into. I also think, or maybe I’d like to believe, that the former owner of Oborniki Śląskie wanted to give his vision a material shape. What happened later I am no longer guessing, because we have before us a variety of traces of his activities when he began to sculpt his desires into this little piece of the world around him. Perhaps he also felt that he was creating and transforming a place that belonged to him, yet rather he became the property of the place, since it allowed him to imprison his desires. It is not only the action of transforming the urban structure (a number of sanatoriums) and communications (one of the first railways in Silesia and the construction of a magnificent train station). Karl Wolfgang Schaubert also wanted the highest peak in the Cat Mountains to be on his land, so he ordered one of the hills to be heightened. Such desires are generally expressed by madmen or artists. Schaubert was certainly not a madman, so we can look at this desire and its realisation (although it was not achieved) from today’s perspective as a particular kind of ”art of the earth” as practised by him.
Life later substantiated many of his original dreams, indeed it is not that it was necessary to create them, to distil them from all the historical strata embedded in this place. The thing is that this desire, the belief in the creative potency of human dreams, is still legible here, that it is like the cornerstone on which this piece of the world rests.
Today I look at Oborniki Śląskie with a certain distance. Still, however, as when for a time I lived here, I feel an intimate connection with this town. In a way, like so many others before me, I also became the property of this place and I’m rooted in it. When I try to answer the question, what exactly decided this and what this bond is, I cannot find an unambiguous answer. Perhaps one of the most important reasons is the amazement I still feel caused by the instrumental power of human dreams. This would mean that I am rooted in the desire I can feel of Karl Wolfgang Schaubert, from which Oborniki Śląskie grew into its contemporary shape.
Everything points to the fact that in this respect I’m not an isolated case. The dream of the early 19th century created a vast, spatial sculpture or, as we tend to say today, an installation. For Joseph Beuys, one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, the very act of thinking became a sculpture. From the perspective of Oborniki Śląskie his thesis seems especially apt, since converted into a spacious work of Schaubert’s dream it created at the same time a space for the thinking and dreams of other people who could realize them here. So does the town function as a kind of gallery in which human thoughts and desires materialize in different ways? Why not? Why should we not think about this place: Gallery – Oborniki Śląskie? Why not see in it a sculpture gallery, an installation gallery open to successive people showing up here, open to their dreams, offering dozens of images, smells and tastes? It’s a very tempting idea, the more so that this place seems to attract people who feel the need to materialize their own experiences and thoughts, to give them the appropriate look and meet their material instantiation.
You will not find in Poland today too many similar-sized towns where as large a group of outstanding artists live and work. The works of the eight artists presented in this exhibition bear outstanding witness to the artistic potential of Oborniki Śląskie. The stake in the artistic game is always identity. From this perspective, you need to look for metaphorical ”Images of the World” in the exhibition, where you can find a number of questions regarding both the individual human identity of the individual artists, as well as the identity of this place, and finally a more broadly understood dialogue of cultural identity.
The city gallery founded by a certain dream constantly functions, regardless of the changing political fates of the place, as a catalyst for liberating creative energy, through which arise so many different works and further artistic individualities crystallize.
Marek Śnieciński – poet, art critic, and curator
MIROSŁAW KOCIŃSKI
Graduated from the Ceramics and Glass Faculty at the State School of Fine Arts (currently: the E. Geppert Academy of Art and Design), Wrocław, Poland, 1985. He has been working there since 1988 – first at the Faculty of Painting and Sculpture and since 1996 at the Ceramics and Glass Faculty. Prodziekan – Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Ceramics and Glass, 2002–2005; Dean of this faculty, 2008–2012. In 2014 he was awarded the title of professor.
He has received numerous awards and prizes, including: 1st prize at the III International Ceramics Biennale, Zarautz, Spain, 1996; Honorary Distinction at the 9th Mino International Ceramics Competition, Mino, Japan, 2011; Honorary “Merit for Polish Culture” Medal, awarded by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, 2012.
He has participated in 19 individual and more than 100 group exhibitions in Poland and abroad, in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Egypt and Japan.
His works can be found in private and public collections, including: the National Museum in Wrocław; the Museum of Ceramics in Boleslaviec, Poland; the Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Gifu, Japan.
ŁUKASZ HUCULAK
Graduated with honours from the Faculty of Painting and Sculpture at the E. Geppert Academy of Art and Design, Wrocław, Poland, 2002. Employed at the academy since 2002; in 2009, he received his Ph.D., and since 2013 he has been running a painting studio and directing Interfaculty Doctoral Studies.
He has received numerous scholarships, awards and prizes, including: Scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, 2000, 2004; 1st Prize at the XIX Festival of Polish Contemporary Painting, Szczecin, Poland, 2002; award at the national competition Biennale of Painting “Bielska Autumn”, Bielsko-Biała, Poland, 2004.
He has participated in more than 50 solo exhibitions in Poland and the Czech Republic, Germany and USA, and more than 150 group exhibitions in Poland and Romania, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Russia, USA, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary.
His works can be found in private and public collections, including: the Museum of the City of Wrocław; the Wrocław Contemporary Museum (MWW); the National Museum in Gdańsk, Poland; the Municipal Art Gallery in Łódź, Poland; the Regional Museum in Stalowa Wola, Poland; and the Museum of Cultural History (Kulturhistorisches Museum Görlitz), Görlitz, Germany.
He is a curator and writer on art, editor of catalogues for exhibitions of the Nadmiar i Brak publishing. He is a member of the Wrocław Academy of Young Scientists and Artists. He started with monochrome still lifes. After a period of fascination with Renaissance primitivism and interior architectonics, he focused his artistic exploration on the theme of the skull and narrowly cropped detail. He is interested in infirmity and fragmentariness, and uses the aesthetics of “imperfect” forms: sketch, self-destructs (works that are splashed, cut etc.), and non finito.
ANNA KUTERA
Graduated from the Faculty of Painting, Graphics and Sculpture at the State School of Fine Arts (currently: the E. Geppert Academy of Art and Design), Wrocław, Poland, 1977. Between 1975 and 1980 she co-ran, together with Romuald Kutera, Lech Mróżek and Piotr Olszański, the Gallery of Contemporary Art (Galeria Sztuki Najnowszej), Wrocław; between 1980 and 1983 she worked as the art director of the Contemporary Art Salon (Salon Sztuki Najnowszej), Wrocław. Together with Jan Świdziński – an artist, art critic and philosopher – she co-organised the international contextual art movement. Her interests are film, video art, photography, painting, installation and performance.
She has created several art series: “Morfologia nowej rzeczywistości” (“Morphology of New Reality”), “Sytuacje stymulowane” (“Stimulated Situations”), “Moje domy” (“My Houses”), “Genetyczne konteksty” (“Genetic Contexts”) and “Post mass-media”.
She has had about 50 individual exhibitions in Poland, Canada, France, and Sweden, including: “Stimulated Situations”, Artculture Resource Center, Toronto, Canada, 1985; “Mój dom rodzinny” (“My Family Home”), BWA – Galleries of Contemporary Art, Wrocław, 1992; “Post…”, National Museum in Wrocław, 2012. She has also participated in about 180 group exhibitions in Poland, Canada, France, and Germany.
Her works can be found in public collections in Poland and abroad, including: the Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art (MAM), Sao Paulo, Brazil; the Danish National Art Library, Copenhagen, Denmark; the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland; the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; the Museum of Art (Muzeum Sztuki), Łódź, Poland; the Leon Wyczółkowski District Museum in Bydgoszcz, Poland; Galeria 72 at the Wiktor Ambroziewicz Regional Museum in Chełm, Poland (Muzeum Ziemi Chełmskiej im. W. Ambroziewicza); Zachęta (Śląskie Towarzystwo Zachęty Sztuk Pięknych), Wrocław.
ROMUALD KUTERA
Graduated from the Faculty of Painting, Graphics and Sculpture at the State School of Fine Arts (currently: the E. Geppert Academy of Art and Design), Wrocław, Poland, 1975. He worked as a lecturer there, 1975–1985. He received a creative fellowship from the Ministry of Culture and the Arts, 1982.
His interests are: film, video-art, photography, drawing, painting, installation.
From 1974 to 1985, together with Jan Świdziński, an artist, art critic and philosopher, he co-organised the international contextual art movement. In 1973–1975 he ran the International Gallery of Contemporary Art (Międzynarodowa Galeria Sztuki Najnowszej), Wrocław. Between 1975 and 1980 he co-ran, together with Anna Kutera, Lech Mróżek and Piotr Olszański, the Gallery of Contemporary Art (Galeria Sztuki Najnowszej) in Wrocław. He also ran in Wrocław the Studio of Creative Photography (Pracownia Fotografii Kreacyjnej), 2002–2010. He was a curator of the Contemporary Art Gallery (Galeria Sztuki Najnowszej) at the Municipal Arts Centre (Miejski Ośrodek Sztuki), Gorzów, Poland, 2008–2014. He was the chairman, 2007–2010, and, from 2016, a member of the Art Council at the Central Board of the Association of Polish Artists and Designers, Warsaw, Poland.
He has received multiple awards: the Audience Award, “Young Cinema” Festival (Festiwal “Młode Kino”), Rzeszów, Poland, 1977; the Main Prize, II International Drawing Triennial, Wrocław, 1982; Grand Prix (the President of Wrocław award), Dolnośląskich Wystaw Sztuki Ciąg Dalszy – Inne Media, Wrocław, 2006.
He has had over 40 individual exhibitions in Poland and Canada, including: “Films to be read”, Artculture Resource Center, Toronto, Canada, 1985; Wrocław Contemporary Museum (MWW), 2014. He has participated in about 190 group exhibitions in Poland, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, and USA, including: ”Contemporary Art from Poland”, Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAyC), Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1973; “Contextual Art”, the Museum of Modern Art in Malmö (Moderna Museet Malmö), Malmö, Sweden,1976; “Mail Art”, Sao Paulo Biennial, Brazil, 1981; Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2015.
His art works are included in private and public collections in Poland and abroad: Aalvar Alto Museum, Jyväskylä, Finland; Sao Paulo Biennial Collection; the National Museum in Warsaw; the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Mała Galeria (at the Association of Polish Artists and Designers), Warsaw; Wrocław Contemporary Museum (MWW); the National Museum in Wrocław; Zachęta (Dolnośląskie Towarzystwo Zachęty Sztuk Pięknych), Wrocław; the Museum of Art, Łódź, Poland; Museum in Koszalin, Poland; BWA Lublin, Poland.
ANNA MARCHWICKA
Graduated from the Faculty of Ceramics and Glass at the State School of Fine Arts (currently: the E. Geppert Academy of Art and Design), Wrocław, Poland, 1988. She received a fellowship from the Ministry of Culture and the Arts in 1989.
She has participated in 9 individual exhibitions in Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands, and in 50 group exhibitions in Poland, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK.
Her art works are included in the collection of the National Museum in Wrocław.
MAREK MARCHWICKI
Graduated in 1986 with honours from the Faculty of Painting and Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts (now the E. Geppert Academy of Art and Design) in Wrocław, Poland. Scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and the Arts, 1987.
Finalist of the “Image of the Year” competition, organized by “Art&Business”, 2003.
Participation in solo and collective exhibitions in Poland and abroad, in Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, the UK, France, and Austria.
In art, he is interested in the question of memory, both personal and collective. He seeks inspiration in his personal “archive”: photos, books, situations, stories, and events. He uses a number of techniques and materials. He experiments and reinterprets methods for creating images. He describes himself as an outsider, remaining out with the artistic mainstream.
YOLANTA NIKT
Graduated from the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław (now the E. Geppert Academy of Art and Design), 1988. After graduation she lived in Oborniki Śląskie. Since 2006 she has run the Four Muses Salon there.
The main prize at the ”Landscape” National Competition of the Universities of Fine Arts, organized by the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, 1987. She sent her work under the name NO-ONE [NIKT], which she has later used as an artist. Scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and the Arts, 1990. Grand Prix in the “Egeria 2000”, National Salon of Fine Arts in Ostrów Wielkopolski, Poland, 2000.
She has participated in approx. 40 solo exhibitions, including: “No matter what time of year” – together with Prof. Józef Hałas, BWA Wrocław – Galleries of Contemporary Art, 1989; “COLLAGES”, Entropia Gallery, Wrocław, 2010, and approx. 50 collective exhibitions in Poland, Germany, and France.
Her works are in the collections of the National Museum in Wrocław and many private collections inPoland and abroad, including the Luciano Benetton Collection in Italy.
She is mainly engaged in oil painting. She also creates collages on paper, and sometimes writes poems. She uses a simplified language of painting. She puts texts on her canvases so that words can indicate the elements absent in the image, e.g. wind direction. She is fascinated by folk and primitive art.
ZDZISŁAW NITKA
Graduated from the Faculty of Painting, the State School of Fine Arts (currently: the E. Geppert Academy of Art and Design), Wrocław, Poland, 1987. He has been working there since 1988; since 2011 he has been running his own studio of painting at the E. Geppert Academy of Art and Design.
He has received multiple awards in Poland and abroad, including: the Main Prize for the poster at the International Film Festival in Mons, Belgium, 1987; “Wiktor” award, Arsenał ’88 exhibition, Warsaw, Poland, 1988; the Award of the Governor of the Culture and Arts Department in Bielsko-Biała, “Bielska Jesień” Polish Painting Competition, Bielsko-Biała, Poland, 1992, and a honourable mention in “Bielska Jesień” competition, 1999. He also won the Main Prize in the competition for the Oborniki Śląskie crest, 1992.
He has participated in 45 individual exhibitions in Poland, Belgium, Germany, and the UK, including: Galeria Bielska BWA, Bielsko-Biała, 2002; the Silesian Museum, Katowice, Poland, 2008. He has also participated in over 200 group exhibitions in Poland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Switzerland, and USA, including: “Polish Drawings Now”, Visual Arts Museum – School of Visual Arts, New York, USA, 1993; the “Collection of the Polish Art of the 2nd Half of the 20th Century and Early 21st Century”, the Four Domes Pavilion, the National Museum in Wrocław, 2016.
His works are included in many Polish private and public collections: POLIN – Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw; the National Museum in Warsaw; the National Museum in Poznań, Poland; the National Museum in Szczecin, Poland; the Silesian Museum, Katowice; the Jacek Malczewski Museum (Muzeum im. J. Malczewskiego) in Radom, Poland.