“Der Linie nach” (Along the Line), a recent exhibition of work by leading Polish avant-garde filmmaker Józef Robakowski, took as its cohesive ingredient a simple formal element: the line. Not in itself a particularly compelling theme, it is nevertheless of great significance for Robakowski, who believes that by training his artistic faculty on such a basic form it is possible to address nonformal, procedural, and personal subject matter.

Robakowski’s roots are in action-based art production dating back to the 1960s, for example with the Toruń, Poland–based collective Zero-61. Since then, and