Eastern European art is defined by multiplicity of perspectives that reflect the region’s rich history, complex socio-political landscape, and cultural diversity. Here’s a run-through of nine major 2024 exhibitions that offer international audiences the opportunity to engage with contemporary expressions of the region.
“Beyond Form: Lines of Abstraction, 1950-1970”
guest curated by Dr Flavia Frigeri
This exhibition connects the works of over 50 women artists through radical abstraction, featuring significant contributions from Eastern Europe. “Beyond Form” observes the intersection between art, gender, and creation in the post-WWII period that coincided with proto-feminist sentiments. The artists whose work is available on view subverted established art-craft hierarchies by employing unconventional sculptural materials. A hidden theme of the show is the role as mothers, carers, and nurturers that many of these women played.
Among Featured Artists: Mária Bartuszová (Slovakia), Maria Teresa Chojnacka (Poland), Ewa Pachucka (Poland), Daniela Vinopalová (Czech Republic), Felicia Leirner (Poland)
Dates: 3 February – 6 May 2024
Venue: Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK
“When Forms Come Alive: Sixty Years of Restless Sculpture”
curated by Ralph Rugoff with Assistant Curator Katie Guggenheim and Curatorial Assistant Anusha Mistry
This exhibition spans over 60 years of contemporary sculpture, showcasing how artists, including Polish Olaf Brzeski, draw on experiences of movement, flux, and organic growth. The eclectic show lifts from sources ranging from dance to the breaking of a wave, conjuring shifting realms of experience. “When Forms Come Alive”, countering the era of increasingly disembodied encounters, invites a tactile gaze and emphasises the pleasure of gesture and the experience of sensation itself. The exhibition features work by 21 international artists.
Among Featured Artists: Olaf Brzeski (Poland)
Dates: 7 February – 6 May 2024
Venue: Hayward Gallery, London, UK
“Re-enchantment”
curated by Oona Doyle
In “Re-enchantment”, ten contemporary artists respond to the process of rendering reality ‘objectifiable’ via promise of re-enchantment – an act of repairing the world through wonder. Therefore, the exhibition counters an ecologically-damaged, demystified, and hyper-rationalized reality. The eclectic lineup ties mysterious threads: painting, photography, sculpture, performative poetry and hybrid installations are all represented, suggesting resonances across different instruments of expression and defamiliarizing the everyday.
Among Featured Artists: Wanda Mihuleac (Romania), Dorota Gawęda (Poland) & Eglė Kulbokaitė (Lithuania), Teresa Pągowska (Poland), Olga Grotova (Russia)
Dates: 17 February —11 May 2024
Venue: Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris Pantin, France
“Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art”
curated by Wells Fray-Smith, Lotte Johnson and Amanda Pinatih (Stedelijk), with Diego Chocano
“Unravel”, organised in six thematic dialogues, puts spotlight on 50 international artists from the 1960s to today who utilized textiles, fibre, and thread to push back against former regimes of power. One of the exhibition’s underlying questions is why art practitioners turn to such a tactile medium in the moment of global turmoil. The artists on view harness textile art (historically undervalued within the hierarchies of Western art history) and turn stitches, knots, and needles into powerful tools of resistance that reveal universal ideas.
Among Featured Artists: Magdalena Abakanowicz (Poland), Małgorzata Mirga-Tass (Poland), Jagoda Buić (Croatia)
Venue: Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK
Dates: 13 February — 26 May 2024
“Tatiana Wolska: Leisure as Resistance”
curated by Roma Piotrowska
Tatiana Wolska utilises discarded materials and breathes new life into them – a legacy of resourcefulness ingrained in her during her childhood in communist Poland. Her work typically display enigmatic, biomorphic shapes. The space is of Wolska’s design – it promotes discussion about the eponymous resistance. Audiences can activate the space via community activities such as meditation-through-drawing sessions. Her first UK solo show, “Leisure as Resistance” features Wolska’s new commissions as well as signature sculptures.
Featured Artist: Tatiana Wolska (Poland)
Dates: 9 March – 2 June 2024
Venue: Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham, UK
“Brancusi”
curated by Ariane Coulondre
This exhibition is a tribute to the father of modern sculpture, Constantin Brancusi. It’s the first time that the Romanian artist has been the subject of an exhibition on such a scale – a sweeping ensemble of nearly two hundred sculptures and other elements of his output, such as photographs, drawings, films and more, that highlight its impressive breadth. “Brancusi” offers an exciting opportunity to discover the sculptor’s musical affinities and visit his partially reconstructed studio. The rare retrospective puts the master’s work in a new light.
Featured Artist: Constantin Brancusi (Romania)
Dates: 27 March – 1 July 2024
Venue: Center Pompidou, Paris, France
“Marina Abramović”
curated by Karen Archey and Nina Folkersma
The exhibition is the largest Marina Abramović retrospective ever held in the Netherlands. A prominent conceptual artist and performer, she is considered one of the most important founders of body art, which she lifted into the mainstream. In her solo work (she had worked with her now deceased partner, Ulay), she orients her performance around spirituality. The exhibition highlights Abramović’s 60 key works, featuring photos, videos, and sculptures. There are daily performances available in the exhibition, reperformed at different times.
Featured Artist: Marina Abramović (Serbia)
Dates: 16 March – 14 July 2024
Venue: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Netherlands
“Wilhelm Sasnal: Painting as Prop”
curated by Adam Szymczyk
This exhibition delves into Wilhelm Sasnal’s – an artist whose work is typically inspired by everyday life and the mass media – interests across painting and film. His screen adaptation of Robert Walser’s novel ‘The Assistant’ is set to release this year; the show features twenty-five of his paintings, some of which played a role as props in the upcoming production. Much more than a glimpse into the artist’s body of work, “Painting as Prop” also conveys resonant themes from the novel such as human adaptability and disposability in capitalist reality.
Featured Artist: Wilhelm Sasnal (Poland)
Dates: 30 March – 1 September 2024
Venue: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Netherlands
“Sports Complex, (En)game Of Curves And Aches“
curated by Karolina Kazmierska
“Sports Complex, (En)game Of Curves And Aches” is a group show offering an art journey that focuses on the body in movement, the sporting body.
This exhibition is an invitation to explore our relationship with the body and physical activity. The spectator’s body is itself set in motion during the exhibition. The works represent and reinterpret bodies in action. They dialogue with the viewer through their scale, but also reflect and refer to the landscape that surrounds them to signify the importance of our relationship to spatiality and the environment in which we live.
It is part of the Cultural Olympiad, the cultural program initiated by the Organizing Committee for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Among Featured Artists: Agnieszka Polska (Poland), Dominik Ritszel (Poland)
Dates: 25 May – 27 October
Venue: Domaine de Chamarande – Département de l’Essonne, 38 rue du commande Arnoux – 91730 Chamarande
