The exhibition of
Edward Krasiński's works in Bunkier Sztuki is his first big retrospective in Poland since his death in 2004. Edward Krasiński is one of the most important figures of Polish avant-grade art of the post-war period. His works are difficult to define. The context for Krasiński's art includes environment art, op-art, conceptualism, and constructivism.
Edward Krasiński's Studio, Warsaw, photo: Aneta Grzeszykowska & Jan Smaga
courtesy of Foksal Gallery Foundation
Krasiński was born in 1925 in Łuck in Wołyń. In 1939, after the outbreak of war, he moved with his family to Kraków, where between 1940 and 1942 he attended Kunstgewerbeschule (The School of Art Industry) which was the German school replacing the Academy of Fine Arts. After the war he continued his studies at the department of painting at the
Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, where in 1948 he graduated under Professor Eibisch.
In 1954 Krasiński moved to Warsaw. In this city his artistic practice fully developed. He was close to the circles of Krzywe Koło Gallery, and later of
Foksal Gallery (which was started in 1966 and run by artists like: Zbigniew Gostomski,
Tadeusz Kantor, Roman Owidzki,
Henryk Stażewski and art critics such as: Wiesław Borowski, Anka Ptaszkowska, and Mariusz Tchorek).
The ABC exhibition will present rarely shown works from the 50s, including less known drawings produced for Kierunki weekly (edited by PAX) between 1956 and 1958. During that period Krasiński painted pictures in surrealist stylistics the selection of which will be shown in Bunkier Sztuki.
Since 1954 Krasiński loosened the structure of his works to integrate them directly with their environment. A very important episode in his career was the plein-air workshop in Osieki in 1964, where he produced a sculpture-painting object called Spear - a dynamic composition which had splashes of red forms on the ground, which later moved upwards on spreading wires. Julian Przyboś compared Krasiński's works to these by
Katarzyna Kobro - while she has released the shackles of a sculpture form and intruduced space into sculpture, Krasiński turned sculpture into line. Przyboś called works from this period 'overhead sculptures' and 'spear-snakes'. They reflected the contemporary disoveries in physics. Przyboś wrote that science, thanks to the discovery of elementary particles, proved that bodies are 'full of holes'; in Krasiński's works there is no continuum - space is discontinuous, it breaks.
A year later Krasiński's first individual exhibition took place - paradoxically, for an artist working in Warsaw, it took place in Krzysztofory Gallery in Kraków. The exhibition brought about great astonishment. Krasiński came back to Kraków as a clearly shaped artist. The exhibition showed Spears, circles hanging one over another getting more and more white, simple objects in exceptional theatrical arrangement - a selection of the works from this exhibition will be opening the show at Bunkier Sztuki.
In his house in Zalesie from the end of the 60s Krasiński made his first attempts to work with the blue plastic current conducting tape called scotch blue. In 1970 he stuck the tape 130 cm above the ground in the courtyard of Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris and on the windows of Rive Gauche gallery. It was a very progressive work. Krasiński said about the tape:
'Plastic Tape Schotch blue, 19 mm wide, unknown length. I stick it everywhere and on everything, horizontally 130 cm above the ground. It appears on everything I get with it everywhere. I don't know whether it is art. But it surely is scotch blue, 19 mm wide, unknown length.'
The exhibition at Bunkier Sztuki will also include Interventions made from the 70s - the ones with real objects, e.g. a phone, and the ones related to the tradition of constructivism - geometrical painting spaces where blue scotch 'enters' making paintings seem like parts of the wall, like parts of reality. Discussing these works Adam Szymczyk wrote that in Krasiński's art the rational tradition of constructivism minges with a dadaist joke.
In Krasiński's studio, opened in 2007, there was found a project of a work prepared for 10th Tokio Biennial in 1970. Thanks to these sketches a project could be reconstructed. It is one of the most important works to be seen at Bunkier Sztuki.
There will also be shown works connected to the studio where, after Stażewski's death in 1988, Krasiński lived alone. Installation from 1994 is an example of a constatnt re-arrangement of the artist's studio and one of many works which multiplies the studio's space with the use of large-scale photography. There will also be shown an installation with mirrors, which multiplies artist's works with the use of mirrors as large as easel paintings hanging from the ceiling (the work shown in Anton Kern Gallery in 2003).
Moreover, there will be presented documents from the artist's studio, and a collection of about 100 photographs by Eustachy Kossakowski - shown in Poland for the first time - and pictures taken by Jacek Stokłosa at a Ball in Zalesie in 1968, which was organised as a result of March 1968 Protest Movement.
Edward Krasiński's most important retrospective exhibitions took place in 1996 in Kunsthalle in Basel and in 1997 in Zachęta. After the artist's death Viennese Generali Foundation was the first to present the artist's oeuvre at the exhibition entitled Les mises en scene in 2006.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Bunkier Sztuki. It includes a text by Paweł Polit on the relation between Krasiński's works from the 50s and the later ones; a text by Patrick Komorowski on Eustachy Kossakowski, and a conversation between Andrzej Przywara and Anka Ptaszkowska.
The exhibition will be open from 11 April 2008 till 6 July 2008.
Curator: Andrzej Przywara
Cooperation: Renata Zawartka
Gallery of Contemporary Art Bunkier Sztuki
Plac Szczepański 3a
31-011 Kraków