Profile Foundation

Artists: Natalia Brandt, Alicja Karska & Aleksandra Went, Jarosław Kozłowski, Zofia Kulik, Józef Robakowski, Ryszard Waśko, Krzysztof Wodiczko 

The exhibition is intended to initiate a discussion on the topicality of art that does not agree with the existing social and political order, a discussion provoked by questions about the role of artists and the place of art in a world destabilised by armed conflict. The rhetoric of the title Beyond Good and Evil refers to situating these questions beyond timeless categories, but not beyond ethical dilemmas. It prompts us to see visual culture and its creators in the context of historical conditions and in the face of challenges that are unavoidable when experiencing current realities, escalating tensions, confrontational politics, and wartime rhetoric. In the face of the questions that arise about the potential role of art and artists, the exhibition Beyond Good and Evil is a proposal to recall the critical traditions of art confronting the mechanisms that generate threats and violence. It is a proposal to look at both current and historical perspectives on artistic practices that engage in disputes with a world that sanctions violence and aggression. The exhibition features artists who oppose the amnesia surrounding the atrocities of the present and the past not through occasional gestures or ad hoc declarativeness, but by developing narratives of visual culture that teach how to ‘replace the argument of force with the force of the argument’. These are artists who distance themselves from the scepticism shown towards art’s engagement with non-artistic issues, and perceive reality beyond the titular rhetoric of ‘good and evil’ to confront the mechanisms that generate threats and violence in their works.

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