Czułość is a gallery and a group of young photographers, closely tied to Warsaw and with a bold attitude and international aspirations. Founded in 2010, it continues to present and promote a fresh view on photography, and manifests a radical approach to exhibiting in that medium.
Czułość translates as tenderness, or sensitivity, thus the gallery's name marries its two main characteristics. The latter definition hints at light-sensitive material such as photographic paper, while the former reflects the attitude maintained by the member photographers in their practice, seeking to approach their environment with an unfettered emotion and at the same time learning to speak about it in their own visual language.
The gallery and the collective - a word the participating photographers refrain from using - was born out of yearning for a place where new photography could be showcased, and one that would breed debates about the medium's contemporary state in creating and in exposing work. Janek Zamoyski, co-founder and current head of Czułość, prefers to speak of it as a creative project rather than institution. Whichever description one chooses, Czułość functions as a formation that is fluid, constantly revised, and one that expresses the immediate needs of people associated with it.
The gallery started as an underground project, and quickly became known for private showings that would turn into wild parties and, as critic and curator Stach Szabłowski said, revived rock'n'roll attitudes within the arts environment.
Owing to these all-nighters and to the aesthetic sensitivity of its members, Czułość rapidly became one of Warsaw's intriguing galleries. Nowadays, from the forefront of the art scene in the capital, it continues its experimental, if not unruly, attitude.
Karolina Sulej, a journalist and anthropologist, described Czułość on the occasion of its second anniversary:
Insubordinate, ungroomed, lost, chaotic, permanently intoxicated, or hangover, gorgeously and boldly naïve, full of faith, making grand statements without a touch of irony, but with a great heart and mind, and with an ashtray forever filled with cigarette butts… It is not a group, a collective, nor a commune. They simply are a bunch of friends.
The photographers now under Czułość's umbrella include Janek Zamoyski, Witek Orski (a co-founder who resigned from co-directing in May 2012), Piotr Bekas, Lena Dobrowolska, Paweł Eibel, Stanisław Legus, Weronika Ławniczak, Kamil Zacharski, and Nampei Akaki. Akaki, who is also a friend of the theatre Couscouskuskus collective, joined the group most recently, after a Tokyo exhibition by Czułość and Sara Rodowicz-Ślusarczyk at the end of 2012, and a series of collaborations that resulted from that event
New spaces, new aesthetics
The gallery opened in summer 2010 at 5-10-15, a grassroots arts-and-culture centre in central Warsaw run for several months by a group of young people in an abandoned tenement house. Czułość commenced its activity with two themed group exhibitions. Soon, however, their exhibition policy shifted – the plan conceived by the group then became organizing a solo show for each of member.
Since moving to an empty house in Saska Kępa, a residential district across the Vistula River, the photographers have taken turns presenting their projects. Having a space of their own grants them freedom and room for experimentation; the opporunity to bounce ideas off friends supports their developing photographic styles. This underlying cooperation, as Zamoyski says, turns "each of the exhibitions into a mutual show of the entire group".
Czułość maintains the habit of group shows to celebrate each anniversary, and these have become opportunities to investigate other means of presenting photography. For its first birthday, the gallery released a zine pack – a collection of short publications designed by Michał Kozłowski (a fellow graphic designer and artist), in close cooperation with each of the photographers. The second anniversary exhibition consisted of posters conceived by members. For their third, the group dealt with moving image – and invited artists from outside of Czułość normally involved with mediums other than photography.
The open, critical approach of Czułość has them act as patrons of independent art. Zamoyski and Witek Orski were mentors in the ShowOFF section of the Photomonth in Kraków in 2012 – a festival project where young photographers are debuted at this large-scale annual event. (Lena Dobrowolska, one photographer the pair selected in that programme, remains a member of the collective.) That spring, Czułość members co-curated On the Raft in Cologne, showcasing a selection of self-published editions from Poland, with photo zines, books and releases by independent music labels.
Czułość continues along their path the critic Szabłowski describes as "operating on the verge of bohemian lifestyle and the neo-liberal myth of taking things into one’s own hands." The gallery moved again in May 2013, to begin a new chapter of its activity at the Koszyki hall, a rescued art-nouveau market in the city centre. With support of the Griffin Art Space, Czułość intends to collaborate with artists involved in mediums other than photography, and to exhibit photographers from other countries.
Ever-expanding, the gallery stays true to its initial principles: maintaining a space open to young, niche photography where artists gain a wider audience - and to develop new ways of producing and viewing photography.
In October 2013, Czułość received the Emerging Gallery Prize at Viennafair - an international Art Fair open to exhibitors from the Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern European region. The Award focuses on young international galleries founded within the last five years, and is given annualy to those standing out due to their creative fair presentation and new ways of approaching clients. This was the first time the gallery took part in the Fair, presenting a solo show by Janek Zamoyski.
In spring 2014, Czułość moved to yet another location - Widok Street in Warsaw. Their activities, which, besides exhibitions, have started including concerts, continue to be supported by Griffin Art Space.
Sources: press materials, own materials, czulosc.com, przekroj.pl, Ed. Anna Micińska 21.08.2013, update AM June 2014