Łukasz Jastrubczak, Sleeping Cowboy, sculpture, 2013, photo: courtesy of Zachęta Gallery
The Deutsche Bank Foundation, Deutsche Bank Polska and the Zachęta – National Gallery of Art identify and distinguish the most interesting young, already established Polish artists for the sixth time this year, in the biannual Views competition.
The international jury of the Views Deutsche Bank Cultural Foundation Award, composed of professionals from the most important Polish museums and art institutions, awarded the main prize of €15,000 to Łukasz Jastrubczak and the second prize – a residency at the Villa Romana in Florence – to Karolina Breguła.
Jastrubczak and Breguła were selected from the finalist list that also included Tymek Borowski, Piotr Bosacki and Agnieszka Polska. While being an effect of the work of recent months, the artists’ latest projects reflect their experiences and preoccupations of the past two years.
Jastrubczak’s Views entry, titled The Perspective of Failure, is a film project inspired by the historical centre of Florence. In the architectonic perspective of the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Vecchio there appears a ‘conceptualist’ – a protagonist with geometrical attributes familiar from the artist’s earlier projects realised in the U.S. Here, the classics of European art meet echoes of the work of the stateside masters of land art. The jury chose Jastrubczak's work, commending his:
Courage to experiment, for the non-instrumental, independent approach towards modern technology, ease in approaching operating discourses, its ephemeral nature, sensitivity, ability to work with shifting perceptions and marginal phenomenon.
Karolina Breguła, winner of the Samsung Art Master contest for talented emerging young artists, is known for her explorations in the field of the relationship between man and art, and the interaction between two diverse cultures and the resulting tension. For Views, she presented a piece called Offence. The artwork deals with a figure of modernity combined with the everyday, showing the life of a public official who, obsessed with a vision of modernity, tries to encourage the residents of his town to display progressive behaviour. After Fire-Followers, which was presented at the Romanian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, Offence is another production from Breguła in which, using realistic modes of depiction, she presents the fictional life of a selected community.
The two winners were announced during the award ceremony on the 24th of October. But the show goes on, and until the 17th of November, the public can vote for the most interesting young Polish artist of 2013 through Twitter: @zacheta oraz na facebook.com/zacheta, or directly at the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw. The award ceremony will take place on Sunday, the 17th of November at Zachęta. Running till that very day is the collective exhibition of the five finalists, curated by Ewa Łączyńska-Widz and Jadwiga Sawicka.
The first edition of Spojrzenia / Views Deutsche Bank Cultural Foundation Award took place in 2003. Its premise is to "support and promote the most talented young Polish artists, those who have the greatest chance of achieving success and contributing to the positive image of Polish art around the world" (Krzysztof Kalicki, chairman of Deutsche Bank Polska S.A.). So far, the title has been given to Elżbieta Jabłońska (2003), Maciej Kurak (2005), Janek Simon (2007), Wojciech Bąkowski and Anna Molska (2009) and Konrad Smoleński and Honza Zamojski (2011).
Karolina Breguła – born in 1979 in Katowice, she lives and works in Warsaw. Author of Let Them See Us, the acclaimed work opposing homophobia and discrimination, and winner of the Samsung Art Master contest for talented emerging young artists. She studied at the GFU School of Photography of the Folkuniversitetet in Stockholm, the European Academy of Photography in Warsaw, and holds a degree in photography from the Leon Schiller State Graduate School of Film, Television and Theatre in Łódź, where she is currently writing a PhD thesis. Author of photographs, video and artistic projects in a public space.
Łukasz Jastrubczak – born in 1984 in Zielona Góra, he lives and works in Kraków. In 2009 he graduated with honours at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice. Co-creator of the artistic duo Krzysztofjastrubczakłukaszkaczmarek and co-author of the publication Mirage. Jastrubczak plays synthesiser in the band Boring Drug. Since 2012, coordinator of the Times New Arial Museum. Affiliated with the Dawid Radziszewski Gallery.
Editor: MJ 25.10.2013
Sources: culture.pl, Polish langauge article for culture.pl, Zacheta art gallery, art mag