Natalia LL's "Consumer Art" (1974). Source: Lokal_30
Two of Warsaw's most important galleries represent Poland at Spain's biggest art fair, with a roster of artists from neo-avantgarde legends Józef Robakowski and Natalia LL to young bloods Aleksandra Waliszewska and Mateusz Szczypiński, plus Maurycy Gomulicki's Sentimental Typologies
Leto and Lokal_30 share a booth at Arco Madrid, and present four artists apiece. Lokal_30 shows powerful, established names known for intriguing, subversive works from the 1970s and '80s: Natalia LL (born 1937) and Józef Robakowski (born 1939). Sculptor and performance-video artist Zuzanna Janin (born 1964) and painter Mateusz Szczypiński (1984) round out the gallery's list with video works exploring social systems and the role of the individual within the state and society, in Janin's works, and Szczypiński's geometric landscapes and portraits reminiscent of a mathematical collage of striking depth and contrast.
Leto features the younger generation of artists, representing Maurycy Gomulicki (1969), Aleksandra Waliszewska (born 1976), Bianka Rolando (born 1979) and Wojciech Puś (born 1981). Gomulicki is the most recognisable of the three, known for works breaching boundaries between high and low culture while exploring sensuality, perversion, vandalism. The series Sentimental Typologies (1999) portrays a world of erotic phantasmagoria using shop mannequins as models.
Aleksandra Waliszewska is a painter who splays abandoned waifs and feral beasts across her canvases, creating a new gothic style. Bianka Rolando's Repeatedly Folded Sentences (2012) is a series of works posing fundamental questions about the institution of art and its role in the realm of contemporary culture. Wojciech Puś combines art and video techniques to create works that play with light and manifest its visual power. Altogether, the Leto showcase explores of how language and literature - stories, fables - have impacted contemporary art, particularly with respect to conceptual art.
Arco Madrid is a major international art event with more than 200 galleries in attendance from 27 countries. The International Contemporary Art Fair is organised by IFEMA, which for the last 32 years has made the Spanish capital a significant hub attracting collectors, gallerists, artists and art professionals from all over the world. This year Turkey is a special guest, and the fair includes a focus on the international art scene, the youngest generations of artists and new platforms for promoting art.
Editor: Agnieszka Le Nart
Source: Leto Gallery, Lokal_30, Arco Madrid - press information
Thumbnail credit: from Maurycy Gomulicki's Sentimental Typologies series, courtesy of Leto Gallery