między / between, photo from the exhibition Książki i strony / Books and Pages, Center of Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, 1992
The works of Poland's most significant concrete poet and artist are on show as part of the Beginningend. Concept-shapes. Concrete poetry. Works from the years 1967-2007 show at Berlin's Guardini Gallery
The exhibition's title Beginningend focuses on the most important themes of this art and also is a fragment of one of the works form the years 1971-1978. Stanisław Dróżdż's primary interests were those of a deeper thought over the basic concepts existing in our minds, such as time and life. His research was conducted by means of language analysis. The text his works present most often undergoes a process of 'framing', which makes it seem as if it was writing itself invisibly beyond the board, deprived of a beginning or end.
This form metonymically shows a relation between a full knowledge of the world and the capabilities of learning about it by the human mind. The subtitle 'Concept-shapes. Concrete poetry' is based on terms which Dróżdż used as titles for almost all of his exhibitions. Doing this he stressed his loyalty to a term he invented and welcomed in the mid-sixties and which became a trademark for his original work and love of concrete-poetry - an avant-garde phenomenon in world literature, operating on the border of fine arts, which intensely evolved from the mid-fifties to the beginning of the seventies and which was popular also among German artists - Eugen Gomringer among them.
The monographic exhibition of Stanislaw Dróżdż's works has been organized by the Guardini Gallery in Berlin in collaboration with the Centre for Culture and Art in Wrocław. The latter institution originally prepared the exhibition in 2009 on the account of the artists 70th birthday. It's the biggest review of his work yet, containing 45 pieces - curated by Elżbieta Łubowicz. That same year the author died, so the exhibition became a summary of his life's work.
Stanisław Dróżdż is the most prominent Polish concrete poet and one of the most important figures of the polish avant-garde. At the 50th biennale in Venice in 2003 it was he, who represented Poland. He was born on the 15th of May 1939 and died in the 29th of March 2009. For over 50 years he lived and worked in Wrocław. The idea of this exhibition is to show Mr. Dróżdż's work as a whole, consequently developed over a lifetime, presenting an original, coherent view of the world and the relation that man has with it. A unique, precise aesthetic of these works was consequently built by the artist alone, over many long years, covering an area between poetry and the fine arts.
Dróżdż's first pieces from 1967 were a continuation of his earlier creative activity as a poet. They made empty spaces on pieces of paper seem equally meaningful to the text placed next to them. In time they made their way to exhibition boards hanged over walls, incorporated objects-signs and evolved into multi-board series, mostly based on mathematical combination and permutation. The exhibition shows an evolution of this creative activity stemming with the poetry of the sixties and growing into space conscious works such as the huge “Alea iacta est” (this piece, consisting of 300 thousand dice, presents all possible 46.656 combinations of six dice and was presented at the Polish Pavilion in Venice in 2003 and also, alternatively as a six volume book).
A piece of music titled FROM TO composed by Tadeusz Sudnik is to accompany the work Space-time as part of the exhibition. The exhibition is also accompanied by a 300 page catalog-album - the first monograph of Stanisław Dróżdż’s work, containing all the works presented at the exhibition (German and English versions available).
The exhibition takes place between the 13th of September to the 25th of November.
The exhibition is organised by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Lower Silesian Voivodship.
Guardini Gallery
Askanischer Platz 4, Berlin
Source: Centre for Culture and Art in Wrocław