The Games Poles Play
An exhibition featuring a selection of Polish video art curated by Monika Szewczyk at CCA forms part of Polish Culture Week 2012.
The Gales Poles Play features video works from the Podlasie Assocition for the Encouragement of time Arts and the Arsenal Gallery in Bialystok. These works investigate the continuing process of political transformation in Poland, that began more than twenty years ago. Poland is a country where political divisions are deep and hostile. Within this landscape the question of identity is one that evokes an increasingly emotional response.
Józef Robakowski’s contemporary classic From my window is a video work that was shot between 1978 and 1999 – from the times of socialism through the Solidarity movement to the first decade of democracy. It is a journalistic record of everyday lives of the inhabitants of one apartment block where the artist also lived.
The protagonist in Jacek Malinowski’s video Marker is a fictional character involved with an informal group of alter-globalists who try to reclaim ‘man’s right to the world’. However, their rebellion is just as fictitious as the matrix of the global capitalistic system, therefore the protagonist falls back to the atavistic gesture of marking out territory… with urine.
In Video clip Paweł Althamer asks young people how they see their future. What do they expect? What do they dream of? This new generation, un-marked by the experience of communism, sometimes repeats the stereotypes and auto-stereotypes grounded in a society building a democracy, but also gives hope of neutralizing contemporary tensions and conflicts.
The Games Poles Play is part of VI Polish Cultural Week. Works for the show are generously on loan from the collections of Podlaskie Associations for Promotion of the Fine Arts and Arsenal Gallery.
Paweł Althamer is a sculptor and video artist born in 1967. His work has been featured in major museums around the world, including Tate Modern in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the New Museum in New York, and at major international exhibitions such as the 7th Berlin Biennial (2012), Skulptur Projekte in Münster (2007), the 9th Istanbul Biennial (2006), and Documenta 10 (1997).
Kuba Bąkowski is an artist born in 1971. He has shown at Center of Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2008), Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2008), Arsenal Gallery, Bialystok (2007), among others.
Łukasz Gronowski is an artists born in 1979. He has shown at Collectiva Gallery, Berlin (2011), Chelsea Art Museum (2010), Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2006), among others.
Jacek Malinowski is an artist born in 1964. He has shown at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2011), CCS, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (2010), Arsenal Gallery, Bialystok (2009), among others.
Kobas Laksa is an artist born in 1971. He has shown at Austrian Cultural Forum, New York (2010), Center of Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2010), Arsenal Gallery, Bialystok (2009), among others.
Piotr Żyliński is an artist born in 1983. He has shown at Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej, Warsaw (2008), among others.
Józef Robakowski is a pioneering video artist and filmmaker born in 1939. His work has been featured in major museums around the world, including Documenta 6 (1977), the 4th Sydney Biennale, 1982, Europa Europa, Bonn (1994), 38 Ludlow, New York (2011), among others.
Works are generously on loan from the collections of Arsenal Gallery and Podlaskiego Towarzystwa Zachęty Sztuk Pięknych.
