Sylwia Serafinowicz

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  picks August 02, 2012

  “Image Counter Image”

  This exhibition significantly updates a decades-long theoretical reflection on the relationship between the production of knowledge and its visibility. Investigating the past twenty years of visual representation of armed conflicts, the curators suggest that two events in recent history mark the shift in image technologies and the methods with which violence is depicted: the Gulf War in 1990 and 1991, and the September 11 attacks in 2001. The exhibition also proposes that, in contrast to those of the past, contemporary models of image production are rhizomatic, triggered by the development of

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  previews May 2012

  “Sounding the Body Electric: Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe 1957–1984”

  Assembling some forty experiments in film, sound sculpture, design, and graphic notation, “Sounding the Body Electric” exposes the fertile relationship between experimental art and new music in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, when state support of technological advancement opened a loophole for relatively uncensored artistic practice.

  Assembling some forty experiments in film, sound sculpture, design, and graphic notation, “Sounding the Body Electric” exposes the fertile relationship between experimental art and new music in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, when state support of technological advancement opened a loophole for relatively uncensored artistic practice. In Lodz, curators David Crowley and Daniel Muzyczuk mine nearly three decades of material—including Slovakian Milan Grygar’s acoustic drawings, Serbian Katalin Ladik’s sound poetry, and a reconstruction of a 1970

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  print April 2012

  Pravdoliub Ivanov

  The first Warsaw exhibition by Bulgarian artist Pravdoliub Ivanov was announced by the Polish word PÓŁPRAWDA, “half-truth,” whose upper portion could be read above the bridge between two parts of the apartment building in the center of the Polish capital that houses the Le Guern Gallery. This inscription, made of self-adhesive foil, is one part of a thus-titled two-element work, 1999/2011. The lower half, made of painted cardboard, was displayed on the gallery wall, so close to the ceiling that it seemed to be vanishing into it. For Ivanov, showing the word half-truth in two locations is an

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  print February 2012

  Eva Kot’átková

  Eva Kot’átková’s solo show in Raster’s new gallery, located in the former seat of the ORNO jewelry artisans’ cooperative, contained elements reminiscent of stage design (curtains, benches made in situ), fragments of older works, and new collages and sculptures. Together they created an unusual and enchanting setting for her exhibition. The two rooms on the first floor were devoted to the installation Dílo přírody/Work of nature, 2011, which also gave its name to the show as a whole. The first space was dominated by geometric sculptures, some of them on the floor, others suspended from the ceiling,

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  picks December 01, 2011

  “Side by Side”

  This exhibition, a collaboration between the Royal Castle in Warsaw and the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, studies the dazzling cultural ties forged between Poland and Germany through over seven hundred works of art produced in the past one thousand years. The first room of the show presents objects from the eleventh century, an era that marked the beginning of the neighborly relations between the two countries. Here, the focal point is the martyrdom of Saint Adalbert, a Czech Christian missionary who was killed in 997 by the Baltic Prussians. Otto III, the king of Germany, visited Saint Adalbert’s

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  print October 2011

  Honza Zamojski

  Honza Zamojski is among the artists nominated this year for the prestigious Spojrzenia award from Deutsche Bank and the Zaçheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, intended to showcase emerging artists. For his recent show “Me, Myself & I,” he filled the exhibition space with drawings, photographs, and found objects, which were all presented as components of the self. In a pile of drawings titled Rośnięcie to strata czasu (Growing Is a Waste of Time), 2011, and Człowiek-drzewo (Human-tree), 2011, drawn on a massive roll of cardboard, he abstracts the features of a face into a basic graphic

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  print February 2011

  Simone Ruess

  To be at the top of Warsaw’s 1950s Palace of Culture and Science—still Warsaw’s dominant architectural presence and Poland’s tallest building—is not to be lifted out of the city’s grasp. Quite the opposite; it is to be in its neglected heart and at the source of its tensions. German artist Simone Ruess spent two years walking Warsaw’s streets with a camera and a sketchbook. Quite naturally the palace, built to serve as a sign of Soviet political influence in Poland, and of which Galeria Studio is a part, became a subject of her study. The artist plunged herself into its endless corridors

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  previews January 2011

  Three Women

  Despite their different backgrounds and heterogenous, multilayered oeuvres, Polish artists Maria Pinińska-Bereś, Natalia LL (Lach-Lachowicz), and Ewa Partum were grouped together from the 1960s through the ’90s by critics who discussed them in terms of their works’ common feminist agency.

  Despite their different backgrounds and heterogenous, multilayered oeuvres, Polish artists Maria Pinińska-Bereś, Natalia LL (Lach-Lachowicz), and Ewa Partum were grouped together from the 1960s through the ’90s by critics who discussed them in terms of their works’ common feminist agency. In this show, titled after a work by Pinińska-Bereś (who passed away in 1999), selections from each artist’s primary medium—sculpture, photography, and text/language, respectively—as well as documentation of ephemeral actions, will offer a broad view of the three practices following

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  print Summer 2010

  Thea Djordjadze

  Thea Djordjadze, a Berlin-based Georgian artist, is a former student of Rosemarie Trockel at the Kunstakademie Du_sseldorf. From 1999 until 2003, she was part of hobbypopMUSEUM, a collective known for combining different media and artistic strategies. Djordjadze recently stepped forward as a sculptor before a wider audience, with the works Deaf and Dumb Universe and Fold B (Large), both created in 2008 and shown at the Fifth Berlin Biennale. She continues to explore sculpture and installation in three exhibitions this year: the solo show “Capital Letter” at the Foksal Gallery Foundation, and