Intermedia, as the title of the ANTI-STATIC exhibition suggests, is the opposite of immobility, stagnation, lack of vitality. These works are full of alternate relations and energy clashes that result from a constant search for new expressions, so they are to a large extent the opposite of traditional academic art.
Art has always searched for and consolidated its output. Nowadays, it not only uses a growing number of new media, but also accumulates, gathers, processes, and refers to itself and to its past – akin to the entire culture.
Izabella Gustowsk
Intermedia, which was the first non-classical field of study in Polish art colleges, has now entered the canon of modern art. That is why the National Museum, presenting art by artists from various eras, is the perfect environment for the ANTI-STATIC exhibition. We can look at the past and discover what is still alive for us, and what has already been covered with the dusts of history. The phenomenon of the contemporary classicisation of avant-garde forms is one of the key references for the ANTI-STATIC exhibition.
The exhibition presents works by visual artists from the Department of Intermedia, University of Arts in Poznan; from professors who established this innovative field of study several years ago, to current PhD students of the department. The university was the first in Poland to begin intermedia studies. The very term “intermedia” has been present in contemporary art since the 1960s, when it was adapted by the American artist Dick Higgins. His musical roots are even older, reaching extravagant and innovative works composed in Italy in the second half of the 16th century. Sound interventions present in the exhibition by Rafał Zapala, a student of the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Academy of Music in Poznan, refer to this tradition.
Diana Lelonek
All the exhibited works have been created especially for this occasion and are presented for the first time, aside from video works by Leszek Knaflewski, an outstanding artist and important figure of the Department of Intermedia, who deceased prematurely. The concept of the project is to show individual artistic practices, but also to create a joint audiovisual work divided into many elements.
It is in media art based on technology that the search for one’s own ways of expression and ways of reaching the sensitivity of the audience must overcome the gravity of contemporary communication, social media, and technologies that organise everyday experience. At the same time, intermedia must continue an uninterrupted dialogue with everyday experience and everyday technologies – from economics to information.
Jana Shostak
The title ANTI-STATIC also emphasises the ability of art to break away from all restrictions, according to the postulate of Italo Calvino, who predicted that in order to survive, art in the 21st century will have to show volatility in the moments of greatest gravity.
Written by Krzysiek Dobrowolski
ANTI-STATIC
Al. Marcinkowskiego 9
Opening: September 16, 2018, 12:00 PM
Exhibition till October 7, 2018
Artists: Wojciech Bąkowski, Piotr Bosacki, Izabella Gustowska, Jakub Jasiukiewicz, Leszek Knaflewski, Daniel Koniusz, Karolina Kubik, Piotr Kurka, Diana Lelonek, Krzysztof Łukomski, Andrzej Pakuła, Jana Shostak, Sławomir Sobczak, Magdalena Starska, Andrzej Syska, Raman Tratsiuk, Marek Wasilewski, Rafał Zapała
Curator: Piotr Krajewski
