Warsaw Art Guide - September

I.
Exhibition title: Warsaw Gallery Weekend
Venue: 26 Warsaw Galleries
Dates: 22 - 24 September 

Thanks to the Warsaw Gallery Weekend, September is an intense time for galleries in the city. For the seventh time, this important event opens the art season in the capital. More than twenty galleries are open for talks with curators, owners and artists. The event program is complemented by meetings, debates and curatorial tours organized in partnership with institutional partners.
This year many young and new galleries are invited to the event. I am already looking forward to see Wilhelm Sasnal at Foksal Gallery Foundation, Katarzyna Przezwańska at Dawid Radziwszewski Gallery and Odile Bernard Schroeder at Pole Magnetyczne. 

I. photo by Jakby Ceran

II.
Exhibition title: Maria Lassnig
Venue: Zachęta — National Gallery of Art
Dates: Until 15 October, 2017

Zachęta presents the first retrospective in Poland of one of the most original painters of the twentieth century, Maria Lassnig (1919–2014, Austria).
Featuring large scale paintings that reveal her long standing exploration of the body and self-representation the exhibition spans her career; from work made during the 1940s in Vienna, periods spent in Paris and New York, her return to Austria in 1980 and paintings made in the final years of Lassnig's  life.

III.
Exhibition title: OSKAR AND ZOFIA HANSEN. OPEN FORM
Venue: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
Dates: 15 September – 29 October, 2017

The exhibition of Oskar and Zofia Hansen’s legacy showcases various aspects of the Open Form theory, which was the axis of their architectural, artistic and educational work. According to Hansen the mission of architecture should be showcasing people and the richness of their daily activity in space. Architecture should highlight subjectivity and create a framework for individual expression, become an instrument that can be used and transformed by its users and that can easily adapt to their changing needs.

Take a private art tour with Zuzanna in Warsaw to discover more! 

Warsaw Art Guide - June

I.
Exhibition title: Connection Zakopane-Warsaw
Artists: Udwik Boller, Wojciech Brzega, Henryk Burzec, Leon Chwistek, Jan Cykowski, Józef Czajkowski, Czesław Domaniewski, Jan Dziaczkowski, Kazimierz Fajkosz, Wiktor Górka, Anna Górska, Władysław Hasior, Stanisław Janowski, Wojciech Jastrzębowski, Józef Kandefer, Antoni Kenar, Władysław Klejn, Stanisław Kokesz, Stanisław Kulon, Magda Leja, Rafał Malczewski, Henryk Morel, Roman Olszowski, Igor Omulecki, Stefan Osiecki, Grzegorz Pecuch, Edward Piwowarski, Józef Rajchel, Zbigniew Rogalski, Antoni Rząsa, Rita Sacchetto, Jerzy Sacha, Henryk Schabenbeck, Władysław Skoczylas, Jerzy Skolimowski, Oskar Sosnowski, Zygmunt Sowa- Sowiński, Zofia Stryjeńska, Karol Stryjeński, Jan Szczepkowski, Ludomir Szpadkowski, Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, Stanisław Witkiewicz, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Jan Koszczyc Witkiewicz, Leon Wyczółkowski, August Zamoyski, Tadeusz i Stefan Zwolińscy, and architectural teams participating in the competition for the shelter at Morskie Oko (Eye of the Sea) in 1959, students of the State School of the Wood Industry (later the State High School of Art Techniques) in Zakopane, the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, folk artists and others.
Venue: The Xawery Dunikowski Museum of Sculpture
Dates: Until 6 August, 2017


The exhibition tells the story of a strong culture-forming link between the two capitals: the political-Warsaw and the winter one- Zakopane. The show presents paintings by Zofia Stryjeńska or Witkacy's drawings from the twenties, fabrics and toys designed by the students of Antoni Kenar after the World War II or bold modernist designs of the shelter by the Morskie Oko (Eye of the Sea) from the fifties. The “connection” is continued by contemporary artists such as Janek Dziaczkowski or Zbigniew Rogalski. 
The exhibition in Królikarnia in an intriguing way depicts how the myth of Tatras was constructed and asks the question if it is still present in polish art.

II.
Exhibition title: Seven sisters
Artist/s: Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Dragana Bulut, Liz Craft, Barbara Leoniak, Nevine Mahmoud, Mélanie Matranga
Venue: Kasia Michalski Gallery
Dates: 1 June - 27 July, 2017


Inspired by such an unprecedented women’s march, Seven Sisters brings together the work of six international female artists whose practices of installation, sculpture, photography, film and performance evoke and deconstruct—with distance, humor and a recurring sense of poetry—the omnipresence of the feminine body in the public realm, and the mystified notion of interior and intimate space.

III.
Exhibition title: Bródno Sculpture Park. Chapter 9
Artist/s: Paweł Althamer, Youssouf Dara, Olafur Eliasson, Jens Haaning, the group Nowolipie, Susan Philipsz, Katarzyna Przezwańska, Monika Sosnowska, and Rirkrit Tiravanija.
Venue: Bródno Park Kondratowicza/ Chodecka, Warsaw
Dates: Until 3 September, 2017

June is a perfect time to visit The Bródno Sculpture Park. The project was launched in 2009 as a joint initiative of the artist Paweł Althamer, the Targówek District, and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. The park functions as an evolving exhibition of contemporary art, presented outdoors and accessible to visitors 24 hours a day.
The 9th edition of the Bródno Sculpture Park is a “repeat” of museum materials. We review the 8 previous editions of the exhibition, revisiting our dear old friends: artists, works, realized and unrealized concepts.This year’s program includes initiatives helping stakeholders get to know one another better—museum staff, local audiences, tourists, recreational users of Park Bródnowski—and critical reflection on the functioning of the sculpture park here on the east side of the Vistula. This will include hikes from the Museum on the Vistula (in the Powiśle district) to the Bródno Sculpture Park, inspired by Situationist dérives (“drifts”); social consultations in the form of picnics; a flying university of art landing at community centres, libraries, prisons.

Introducing the Avant-Garde Institute, Warsaw

The Institute of Avant-Garde is an extraordinary gallery at the site of the studio of late Polish artist Edward Krasiński. It is preserved exactly in the same state as it was left in 2004, after the artist’s death. Edward Krasiński was one of the most important protagonists of the Polish neo-avant-garde from the 1960s and '70s. 

The main feature of his studio is blue Scotch tape, which he stuck horizontally at the height of 130 centimetres, “everywhere and on everything”.

 “I don’t know whether this is art”, he commented, “but it’s certainly scotch blue, width 19 mm, length unknown”. Krasinski’s works are currently showing at the Tate Liverpool until March 2017, where his blue Scotch is juxtaposed with the Yves Klein exhibition.

Edward Krasiński in his studio

The studio is placed on the eleventh floor amongst a block of flats in Warsaw’s city center. From 1970 Krasiński shared the atelier with Henryk Stażewski, another well-known avant-garde and constructivist artist.The studio is open to the public but because of the unusual conservation restrictions, groups have to be small and must be booked in advance.

The terrace pavilion which was newly attached to the studio houses all kinds of exhibitions, lectures, workshops and academic sessions—forming a broad context for the tradition created by Stażewski and Krasiński. The confrontation of Krasiński’s ephemeral works with new exhibitions and critical reflection makes the Avant-Garde Institute a unique experiment in contemporary museum practice.

- by Zuzanna Zasacka