Still Awaiting Recognition Review Of Maria Pinińska-Bereś’s Exhibition In Galerie Nächst St. Stephan (Vienna)

The Polish artist Maria Pinińska-Bereś (1931-1999) is only known to a small audience outside her home country. Although she absorbed international impulses from Pop Art, Performance Art, institutional critique, and ecological as well as feminist art, the artist’s oeuvre has been insufficiently recognised outside Poland.

The exhibition “Meadow of Your Body” at Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder (Vienna) changes at least partly the underrepresentation of the artist. Jarosław Suchan, the curator, has put together a clever selection from Pinińska-Bereś’s sculptural and performative work. The selected pieces are presented chronologically in the gallery to make visible developments and continuities in the artist’s work from 1965 to 1990.

Pinińska-Bereś’s early career was influenced by Xawery Dunikowski, a modernist sculptor and her teacher at the Academy of Arts in Kraków. During this time, she used classical materials such as cement or plaster. In the 1960s, the artist began to include textiles and fabrics. “Rotunda with a Chain” (1963) and “Lady with Bird” (1964) are characteristics of this phase of her oeuvre. Light materials that the artist could move and transport herself became increasingly important in the following decades. In 1972, Pinińska-Bereś made a cast of a female torso out of papier-mâché and wood with the title “Is a Woman a Human Being?”. She criticised the construction of femininity and, with the handwritten remark “Expiry Date…?”, the sexualised commodification of the female body.

Although Pinińska-Bereś had been dealing with feminist topics, she had an ambivalent relationship with feminism throughout her life. The artist resisted categorisation and political appropriation of her art (which is to be understood in the Polish context, since art production was censored and regulated by the state, especially during the 1950s). Nevertheless, she participated in important feminist exhibitions, such as “Women’s Art (Sztuka Kobiet)”, which took place in Poznań in 1980.

The artist’s performative work, which illustrates her feminist commitment as well as her interest in ephemeral and light materials, is also visible in the Vienna exhibition. In 1976, Pinińska-Bereś staged her first performance. She had been familiar with happenings and performances since the 1960s because she was associated with the influential avant-garde artist Tadeusz Kantor and married to the sculptor and performance artist Jerzy Bereś. From the mid-1970s to the 1990s, Pinińska-Bereś staged twenty performances.

In Vienna, photographs and documents from the two performances “Portable Monument” (1979) and “Author’s Standard” (1979) are shown. Both took place outside the conventional exhibition space. They underline Pinińska-Bereś’s interest in nature and her pioneering role in ecological art. “Author’s Standard” also shows Pinińska-Bereś’s critical attitude towards established art institutions. In the performance, she used a cloth blanket, a pink flag and a flute to reinterpret public space as artistic space. By repeatedly raising the flag and playing a song, she performed “an act of celebration”, self-determining where and how her art took place.

A similar procedure was staged in “Portable Monument”. Four pink-painted poles covered with an overhead canopy were erected in the countryside. Pinińska-Bereś saw the installation as a homage to nature, paying tribute to a place without permanently disturbing the impression of the landscape. After a few days, the “monument” was taken down again. By displaying the concept sketch (which was unknown to me until the exhibition), the artist‘s intensive reflections on monuments and natural sites are evident.

In her late work from the 1980s and 1990s, the artist was still preoccupated with soft, flexible materials and the exploration of sexual motifs. The sculpture on the floor “The Meadow of Your Body” (1987) shows sexual organs, pubic hair, folded fabric and the recurring colour pink.

For other Polish artists of the 1970s and 80s, such as Natalia LL, the female body and sexuality were also important points of reference. Maria Pinińska-Bereś, however, developed an abstract language of form that, in addition to desire and lust, also included a feminist-ecological critique of art institutions.

This is also evident in the artist’s last prominent series, “Existentiarium” (1990). Pink-coloured, strangely shaped cushions appear. They are squeezed into boxes and make visible the strict social rules that deform human existence. As in her performative work from the 1970s, Pinińska-Bereś points to the invisible rules of the art business such as: Are women allowed to make art? Can a monument be temporary? May places unrelated to art be claimed for art? Pinińska-Bereś raised these questions throughout thirty years of art making. This makes her work so relevant for it to be exhibited and examined again and again.

Written by Johanna Luisa Müller