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IN BETWEEN:
Chicago Cultural Center
Part I Imagine that over fifty years ago, European civilization, devastated by the most inhumane, the worst World War in history, struggled to rebuild -- without a generous Marshall Plan, under a brutal totalitarianism. Imagine also, that art, rather than a game of affluent elites and scholastic theorizing, rather than a commodity of markets and fashions, remained with the committed, the inspired, those who had only art to gain, often at great cost. In fact, that is indeed history. In 1945, much of Central and Eastern Europe fell to Soviet domination, was cut off, and continued on largely unregarded by a public to its West. Much of that Central Europe, however, remained very aware of Western trends and thought. In Central Europe, earlier art experiments continued to evolve further; countertrends vied with still newer movements -- often unapproved -- that paralleled West European and American art. At times, the fresh and unexpected competed with or adapted to a viable, resurgent past. In that world, traditions proved themselves a counterweight, ballast, to passing novelties. Alternatives are precious. All this makes "IN BETWEEN: Art From Poland 1945-2000," an unprecedented retrospective and a contemporary overview, particularly interesting, significant, and a deep pleasure. As part of this event, over 109 works by 40 Polish artists, will be at the Chicago Cultural Center until March 25, 2001. This extensive survey occupies four galleries at that center -- its Exhibit Hall, the Sidney R. Yates Gallery, and two of the Michigan Avenue Galleries. "In Between" began its genesis in the 1997 exhibition, "Art from Poland, 1945-1996," which took place in Budapest, Hungary, and then traveled to various European cities. "In Between," an exclusive Chicago event, presents an expanded and updated exposition. Konrad Kuzyszyn's The Human Condition (1994/95), in a sense may well serve as an icon for this exhibition, and the several coordinated shows elsewhere in Chicago. Kuzyszyn was born in 1961, in Bialystock, and studied at the Wladyslaw Strzeminski Graphic Art Faculty, State College of Fine Arts, Lodz, Poland. This artist is represented by three installations, but perhaps the most telling is his Untitled (1999/2000). Materially, it is constructed of a human skull, LCD [Liquid Crystal Display], mini-digital camera, a Bible, plexiglass, and metal rods. The gallery statement notes that this artist converts gallery space into the inside of a human skull. A real skull rests on a pedestal in the center of the room; electronic aids simultaneously record the viewer's approach -- from a perspective of the skull's own eye sockets. Thus, a viewer is both within a fabricated sensorium, and an object in itself examining itself. A human condition, and the essence of its art. Katarzyna Kobro (1898-1952) serves, tragically, as an exemplum of Polish Twentieth century art. Born in exile in Moscow, Kobro studied at the School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, in association with Kasimir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin. She returned to Poland in 1924, together with her husband, Wladyslaw Strzeminski. Kobro became a leading figure in the Polish avant-garde in the 1920s and 30s. She held ascendency during the interwar period, working with advanced Polish circles such as Blok and Praesens. Ultimately, however, much of her art was destroyed; first in her move to Poland, and, later, in World War II, when she was forced to cease activity. In the late Forties, Kobro returned again to nudes, building upon her earlier Cubist and Futurist achievements. She died in Lodz, Poland, in 1952. Katarzyna Kobro's enduring discoveries in art can be seen in two works of this show, both of which are bronze casts, executed in 1989, of pieces done in 1948. The Cultural Center hosts Kobro's: Nude and Girl Nude. The Nude is an impressive, enduring condensation of female form. Kobro, among those who sought to bring sculpture closer to architectural imperatives, plays the material's solid mass against its surrounding space. Here, the artist is acutely aware, not just of fashioning a work of hand in solid matter, but of its intimate displacement with what a viewer feels as equally significant volumes in the air about it. Girl Nude holds her head with her right hand, and contemplates her left, as if that empty hand held an unseen presence, set for contemplation. Katarzyna Kobro's art rests still within a time when art sought to attain new insights into just what the human creature is, how it perceives itself, and how, in being made aware of that, man might proceed to being far more human, and from that enlightenment, proceed beyond.
Wladyslaw Strzeminski (b. 1893-1952) is represented by After-image of the Sun. Woman in the Window (1948:Oil on canvas:77x57 cm) which displays a Matisse-like feel for bright, decorative hues, and which makes effective use of raised paint ridges to accent the work's contours. This latter relief plays effectively to the protean shapes and forms within. Strzeminski, as a young engineer from Minsk, had met Kasimir Malevich after the first World War, and became his assistant in Vitebsk. Strzeminski returned to Poland in 1922. The artist was eventually in touch with neo-plasticism movements in the West and developed an approach to art known as Unism. Art historian, Peter Pelz, in 15 Polish Painters (MOMA:1961), summarized Strzeminski's Unism: "Unism eliminated all possible reference to the actual object, all space illusion, any kind of emotional expression -- attempting to proceed in a scientific, almost mathematical manner toward the attainment of a disciplined and balanced unity of color and form." Strzeminski founded the non-objective artists' group Blok, which was succeeded by Praesens, a gathering which also attracted designers and architects. All sought to meld intuition with technology for a better society. Strzeminski's textile design of 1947-1948, rendered in gouache on paper (24x31.8 cm), reveals a thread-wormed sinuosity, while his two sketches for Window (both gouache on paper:1948:24x30 cm) anticipate the much later work of American artists such as Stuart Davis. Strzeminski's Spikes (1950:25x35 cm), a rendering of five stylized heads of wheat are in advance of 1960s revived 'folk' popularization. The two pencil and water-colors on paper, both entitled Landscape from Nowa Ruda (25x35 and 31x48 cm respectively) contrast six consecutive, entwined wire-line forms contoured against a Cezanne-esque daubed background, a combination reminiscent of Ben Shahn. Henryk Stazewski (1894-1988) sought a 'pure art' founded upon order and geometric discipline. Art historian, Peter Selz noted in his 15 Polish Painters that Stazewski "was close to [Piet] Mondrian and [Hans] Arp as well as [Kasimir] Malevich, and he carries purist construction into the present." Pelz further commented: "...Stazewski disturbs and delights the viewer by playfully upsetting rigorously constructed space relationships." Indeed, even the paintings' slight shiftings in composition often do "...suggest alterations and readjustments that are never completed...." This artist is represented by five pieces. Composition 64/74 (Acrylic on masonite:1974:60x60 cm), rendered in a range of blues, is composed of two units, one above the other, each a concentric ensemble of skewed rectangular frames. No.48 (1976:64x64 cm), made of acrylic, cardboard, and masonite, comprises a black 'stick' sequence which disintegrates in orderliness -- 'falls down' -- as the eye proceeds from right to left. No.3 (1978:64x64 cm) superimposes one set of parallel lines over a second, similar grouping. In No.28 (1978:43x43 cm), a blue framing contour surrounds a black and white composition in which four blocks, arranged as an "L," overlay an incomplete grid formation of kindred blocks. Stefan Gierowski (b.1925) is also noted in Pelz's 15 Polish Painters where the reviewer observes that "Stefan Gierowski actually likes to think of himself as a successor to Unism." That critic focused on Gierowski's then commitment to "adhere to the flat picture frame and never allow the slightest suggestion of a third dimension." Pelz adds: "Neither is there excitement engendered by their slight variations in color, yet subtle vibrations are created by the delicate textures and veiled light which seems to emanate from the interior of the painting." Gierowski has three pieces in this showing: Painting CCXXXIII (Oil on canvas: 1967:120.5x179 cm); Painting DCCX (Oil on canvas: 1997:150.5x110 cm); and Painting DCCXLVII (Oil on canvas: 2000:140.5x100 cm) Alina Szapocznikow (1926-1973) is represented by a shocking beauty. Her Tumors Personified (1971), an ensemble of 14 pieces, are fashioned from polyester, glass wool, newspapers, and gauze. This sculptural grouping at first evokes the Naiad of August Rodin, or Medardo Rosso -- human countenance emerges from each amorphous globe; but the title theme immediately brings to heart the fact that each element in the assortment was inspired by a deadly reality, one which also claimed this artist. Szapocznikow's second work in this showing are eight photographs: documentation of additional work (four are 40.5x40.5 cm; four more: 40.5x27.5 cm). For Andrzej Wroblewski (b.1927-1957), this exhibition provides eight works. Two earlier pieces, The Executed/Execution VI (Oil on canvas: 1949:118x89 cm) and Child with Dead Mother (Oil: 1949: 119.5x70 cm), reflect his experience of World War II. In Execution VI, the form of an SS or Gestapo executioner stands with back toward the viewer. To the executioner's right, in a violent dislocation of torso -- a Guernica-like rendering -- the upper torso is severed, rotated 190 degrees and returned upon the still-standing lower corpus: The artist iconifies the powerless victim. Wroblewski's later work in this showing reasserts an aesthetic turn: Young Man (Gouache on paper:1957:29.5x42 cm) displays an Analytical Cubist approach; while Multi-color Head (1957:29.5x42 cm) approaches reductive caricature. Wroblewski's Red Self-Portrait (1956:33x45.7 cm), created a year before, offers a straight-forward figurativeness. Three canvases of Roman Opalka (b.1931) are displayed in the Southern first floor Michigan Gallery. These are parts of a continuing project: OPALKA 1965/1-Infinity. In 1965, Opalka began the project, Describing The World, with the goal of visualizing the flow of time; and eventually the artist initiated a series of canvases (all 196x131 cm) which together have been evolving the on-going OPALKA 1965/1-Infinity. Opalka started with painting a consecutive number on each canvas, and with each number growing lighter, has embarked toward an infinite progression in what might be called a quasi-minimal Minimalism. At first, the viewer is puzzled; some of the brushwork is currently so faint, so subtle, as to be barely discernable. True to this latter direction, which first appeared in 1972, the artist has worked an ever lighter hue which, ultimately will culminate in white on white. Stanislaw Drozdz (b.1939) is best known for his concrete poetry and space arrangements in museums and galleries. In this survey exhibition, he has Forgetting (Tempera on drywall:2000). This artist has a strong interest in the philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and in linguistic research: interests which link his poetry and his art. Ryszard Winiarski (b.1939) is particularly interesting as an artist whose development from Constructivism toward the use of random process in his art has added a subtle currency to earlier experimentation. In both works here, From 0 to 100% Black (Acrylic on plywood:1975:30x30 cm), and The Ninth Game 9 x 9 (Acrylic on canvas:1981), he takes as a starting method a contructivist division into grid, but the final arrangement of elements in his paintings is determined by chance, a roll of the dice. The Ninth Game 9 x 9 sequences 9 blacks spikes on a white ground in a progressive alteration, a mathematical growth. What, surprisingly, is again so very timely in such a piece is its clear affinities to very new sciences such as Non-linear Dynamics and Complexity or Chaos theories. Initial small differences grow to distinctly different, but coherent ends -- like weather systems, populations, snowflake crystals -- the famous 'butterfly effect' (a small flutter oceans away dominoes into storms elsewhere). It is a more sophisticated parallel to spontaneous art (and far from a truly random 'happening'). Finished Column (Bronze:1991:Height 252 cm;Base 84x70 cm) by Krzysztof Bednarski (b.1953) is a totem-pole of seven heads, all of Karl Marx, with three more masks of Marx lying at the column's base, as if they had been shed. The visages of Marx have appeared a number of times in Bednarski's work. With this ready-made object, the multiple plaster cast, the artist typifies the voiding of Marxist ideology and the system to which it led in the former Socialist Bloc. Of the artist's content, the Exhibition Notes comment that "...its meaning grew more and more liquid and changed depending on the context given to it by the artist," adding: "At the same time, the artist entered into a somewhat ironic dialogue with his predecessors: Brancusi, Beuys, or Dunikowski." Bednarski's work is also represented by a transparency of his piece, The Missing Hand of Lenin (Bronze:63x53x36 cm). Polish aphorist, Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, once quipped: "When smashing idols, save the pedestals... They may come in handy." Art and idols -- Bednarski carries it all through. Robert Maciejuk (b.1965) bases his work on public signage: immediate, wordless, ubiquitous. This artist has twelve works in both the Sidney R. Yates Gallery and the Main Exhibit Hall. Untitled (man and garbage) (Enamel on plywood:2000:46x46 cm) portrays a hand tossing a bottle and debris into a highly symbolized container. Maciejuk's Untitled (shoe) sports a symbolic foot about to tread a 'T' symbol. Their context and placement -- here, as Art -- is intended to neutralize their function as communication. Here again, aphorist S.J. Lec may be insightful: "In the beginning was the Word. Then came the cliche."
Edward Krasinski (b.1925) is represented by Faucet (ca.1965). This is a pipe, bent at its base into an open-frame pedestal, and continuing upwards as an upright pole. A blue wire is strung through the piping, and holds an attached faucet out at length. This same wire also continues... to stream from the faucet nozzle as a liquid extrusion. Faucet is akin to work done elsewhere in the 1960s; in the U.S., Claes Oldenberg exemplified the fashion. In 1970, Krasinski taped a blue line on the display windows of 40 some galleries of the Parisian left bank on the Seine. Whether, as debated, this denoted the artist's gaze, or one's physical heart-level, Krasinski's Blue Line once again spans through the Chicago Cultural Center. The viewer should attend to it. Artists such as Maciejuk and Krasinski do attest that Polish art in some ways has joined in with movements abroad. Certainly, Polish circumstances were more liberal than elsewhere in the former Socialist Bloc and art trends, even where unsanctioned or discouraged, either found popular encouragement, or support abroad. But some of the greatest strengths of "In Between: Art from Poland: 1945-2000" are in its highly individual voices and artistic evolutions. Magdalena Abakanowicz (b.1930) is one of those highly individual voices. And she has been widely acclaimed; in the U.S., and abroad; and now finally in Poland. Ninety-Five Figures from the Crowd of One Thousand Ninety-Five Figures (Bronze cast :1998-2000:175x60x30 cm) is an installation in the North first floor Michigan Gallery, and it consists of a group of 40 adult figures (Each approx. 175x60x30 cm.), 40 Bambini (Each approx.106.7x35.6x25.4 cm.), and 15 Youngsters (Each approx. 150x45x30 cm.). These are torsos; headless and standing erect, stiff, challenging. They do intimidate. That is the artist's intent. Abakanowicz begins, as she herself notes, with a mass sensation: "I am fading among the anonymity of glances, movements, smells, in the common absorption of air, in the common pulsation of juices under the skin." But this work culminates in the artist's instinct that: "Each crowd is unpredictable and may act as a brainless organism." They have been sculpted, cut solidly. But they are shells, each with a specific relief drawing inside. Ultimately, it is their numbers and mass which predominate. And it carries great effect.
Wilhelm Sasnal (b. 1972), in his two oils on canvas: Hospital in Brzesk (1999:110x120 cm), and Untitled (Oil:1999:75x75 cm), hones essential visual information to its minimal effective core. Hospital in Brzesk (1999) splits the canvas image into two stark contours: a lower third is occupied by a dark, almost silhouette of gently rolling land; a clear, light blue sky fills the upper two thirds of the image. And, small and isolated, almost an afterthought, a stark suggestion of the hospital seems to float like a bobber on liquid landscape. Sasnal's paintings capture much in very direct expression. In a wide ranging exhibition, it is always interesting to see how kindred formal instincts emerge among very different individual concerns with content. The exhibition statement on Jaroslaw Modzelewski (1955) notes: "Since 1990, Modzelewski has continued to apply his method of perceiving, preserving, purifying, typifying (homogeneous surface, simple composition, limited range of colors), and reducing the composition to its elementary divisions...." These tendencies began with earlier formulations of the artist: even during the 1980s his interests focused on what has been called "a peculiar dialogue" with the state-supported Socialist Realism of the Fifties. Modzelewski displays a wry, cynical and yet ambivalent involvement with the "poetics of propaganda posters," and graphics of that period in his Attachment to Traditional Values (Oil on canvas: 1986:130x180 cm). Here, at right, a barber shaves a patron, while to the canvas left, a man crouches with an axe. The painting raises some doubts as to the final nature of the cut. Which may well be a reflection upon the nature of that Socialist art which inspired Modzelewski's theme. This artist has had a strong interest in the role of signs -- the repertoire of persuasion, as well as coercion -- amid the chaos of "non-significant" elements. There is here, however, a strong involvement with the social, and the psychologies of politics. Reduction, typification, strong contrast of contour and color mark the art of Jaroslaw Flicinski (b.1965). Flicinski's 2003 and 2004 (Acrylic on wall:2001:12'x32') confronts the viewer with two wall-sized ellipses and a quadrangle through which blues run through to purples and cyan; this on a background of stark, primary yellows and pinks. The artist imposes cool color upon 'hot' color, and works this against a simple geometric reduction. Flicinski has an acrylic on drywall in this showing: I Love My Time (Acrylic on wall:2001:length 7-8 m). Not all artists can claim to love their time, or even be at peace with it. Robert Rumas (b.1966) offers Las Vegas 1994-1999, a mixed media sculptural construction which translates Roman Catholic devotional images and custom into casino culture. The work is intended as a critique of the Roman Catholic church, which the artist views as 'superficial, hypocritical, and bound to materialism.' With Modzelewski, and a number in this showing, one meets a recurrent chaffing against proffered orthodoxies. Only the specific orthodoxies vary -- the aphorist Lec once wrote: "One may change one's gods without changing one's religion. And vice versa." Artist Marek Chlanda (b.1954), offers contrast. Chlanda is represented by his construction, Saints (2000:150x182 cm), made with pencil and charcoal on paper, wooden plank, bricks; and by the artist's Square (2000:150x182 cm). "IN BETWEEN: Art From Poland 1945-2000" -- Over 109 works by 40 Polish artists, presents a number of artists well-known in the U.S., and for whom one can find excellent books and catalogues. But it also presents a number of younger artists with excellent, at times surprising and delightful creativity. It is all on view at the Chicago Cultural Center until March 25, 2001.
Finis Part I --G. Jurek Polanski Jurek Polanski has previously written and art edited for Strong Coffee in Chicago. He's also well known and respected among the Chicago museums and galleries. Jurek is currently a Visual Arts Correspondent for ArtScope.net. Editorial Note: Henryk Stazewski, Stefan Gierowski, and Tadeusz Kantor are featured in 15 Polish Painters by Peter Selz (Museum of Modern Art, N.Y./Doubleday and Comp.,Inc.: 1961). Of further interest is Magdelena Abakanowicz [exhibition organized by] Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. (Abbeville Press: 1982). A full catalogue for this retrospective will be available at the Chicago Cultural Center first floor bookshop. |
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