Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkáčová, Clash!, porcelain, acrylic paint, dimensions variable, 2012, courtesy of the artists, Photo: Jens Ziehe for KINDL – Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Berlin, 2016
Artists: Filip Rybkowski, Michał Zawada, Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkáčová, Lucy McKenzie & Markus Proschek, Ariel Schlesinger.
Curator: Paulina Olszewska
Exhibition concept: Michał Zawada, Filip Rybkowski & Paulina Olszewska
The exhibition concentrates on the question about artwork understood as a created object in the context of art history. How were history and theory of art formed by particular visions and imagination, which then influence our own perception and understanding, taste and style?
The object of art is the result of a complex process of creation. It gains a solid and physical form, which functions as the embodiment of abstract ideas, associations, patterns of thought and their transformations. In the exhibition, this creative process will be compared to a natural phenomenon: a volcano. Its structure and way of functioning unites two physical contradictions: liquid, heated matter which is in permanent transition on the inside and a cooled, firm layer on the outside, which keeps this undefined substance within a solid framework.
Furthermore, a volcano can be seen as a metaphor, especially in the context of the nineteenth century revolution and the social and political changes rooted in romantic literature and the Socialist movement.
This comparison of volcano and social revolution, which occurs beneath the solid surface of legitimized social constructs appears in writings by Karl Marx or in poems by Adam Mickiewicz, Poland’s 19th-century national poet & activist, a supporter of the Polish independence movement.
The exhibition relates also to the current context of social and political crises and the permanent tension and interaction between the two different ideas or visions about our future.
The concept of the exhibition and its structure is also strongly influenced by the space itself. The metaphor of a volcano, seen as a process of the transformation of matter, will be translated into the space of the Horse & Pony Fine Arts.
The narration, which begins in lower parts and moves to the upper space of the Horse & Pony Fine Arts, carries several ideas. Firstly, it represents the creative process itself: from an abstract, undefined idea to its final physical form. Then it poses the question of how art and its history have been created and shaped? And how does that influence participants’ and viewers’ understanding? At the end it also relates to the phenomena of revolution, seen as lava, which tries to escape and extinguish the hard structures we see.