Kuba Bąkowski, Polaris, courtesy of the Temporary Gallery, Cologne
An exhibition of works by vibrant young artists from Poland at the Temporary Gallery kicks off the year-long Klopsztanga programme in Cologne - a series of cultural events presenting the most interesting arts, music, theatre and literature from Poland in the North Rhine-Westphalia region
Coming Soon, subtitled Arrière-Garde, aims to shed light on the artistic practices of Poland's young generation of daring contemporary artists. Unlike its title would suggest, the show does not answer to questions like "What's new in Polish art", nor does it represent any particular "scene". It aims to draw a narrative of a fragile present, an uncertain future, and a sense of impending change, after which nothing - in neither art nor reality - will ever be the same again. This narrative is told through each individual work of art created by a dozen of Poland's brightest talents.
The select group of artists belong to the current of Arrière Garde. They form part of a generation that did not overthrow communism and did not participate in the period of Polish transformation. When after the fall of communism, contemporary art found itself in the avant-garde of socio-economical change in Poland, some artists moved from the head of the procession to the rear, forming the rear guard, or arrière-garde, of late modernity. The creation of a modern, secular, democratic society, producing and consuming the fruits of a free-market economy based on an image of Western society left no room for the development of non-commercial art. They were thus forced to define new paradigms for themselves, by themselves. This is reflected in the shape of the exhibition, which brings together very diverse artistic practices that refuse to be pigeonholed into any political or aesthetic agenda.
In the ranks of the arrière-garde, in the rear, things are far less regulated than in the disciplined rows of the front guard, the avant-garde. Here, the order of things becomes relaxed. Radek Szlaga installs burnt-out cars which will not take us anywhere. Posed as a romantic traveller, Wojtek Pustoła reaches the end of the road and vomits out of excess the beauty of a perfect landscape and Piotr Grabowski asks about the Delphic oracle and receives wrong answers only. Olaf Brzeski’s animistic sculptures clash with the virtual spaces of digital simulations in which Norman Leto deconstructs, with scientific cruelty, the delusions of humanism. The post-industrial, ironic romance of Kuba Bąkowski’s Polaris, a personal navigation into the unknown Arctic sky contrasts with the apocalyptic minimalism of Konrad Smolenski’s audio piece that broadcasts sound instead of recording.. Both prove equally deceiving because, as the Incredible Hulk says in another of Bąkowski’s works, "The question is more about not where we are as when we are".
The connections between the different works are far from clear, but only to the extent to which the reality in which we find ourselves is itself murky. The exhibition is also streaked with the same anxiety with which we look into the future. An exhibition of grotesque images, of weakened matter that loses form, of false prophecies and distant landscapes that turn out to be mirages. On the horizon looms the tropical forest of Paweł Eibel’s photographs, the paradise from Apocalypse Now, a moment before the napalm catastrophe.
Curator Stach Szabłowski explains the context of the project as a reference to the standstill in the art world of the west. He says,
It can be suspected we are preparing for a role in a show that is about to be taken off the bill. Cologne, the city where Coming Soon is presented, seems a quintessence of Old Europe. If Old Europe, an area of democracy, prosperity and order really exists anywhere, it is precisely here. It is one of those places one can hardly imagine a better future for than its present. One can very easily think of it as a place where things are already well – and can only get worse. But it will surely be a different case. The status quo will not last forever (though that is perhaps what we would really like to happen). The change will occur soon. And, for the first time in the history of European modernity, it will not be the result of the fulfillment of yet another great political or social project. This time, quite simply, it has proved impossible to invent the future. In this situation, the notion of the avant-garde no longer makes sense.
Coming Soon opens on the 16th of April at 5:00 pm and runs through the 26th of April. It has been realised by the Art and Present time Foundation on the initiative of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, within the frame of the project KLOPSZTANGA Polen grenzenlos NRW 2012/2013.
Artists in the exhibition: Kuba Bąkowski, Olaf Brzeski, Paweł Eibel, Piotr Grabowski, Norman Leto, Jacek Malinowski, Tomasz Mróz, Ewa Naporowska, Wojtek Pustoła, Konrad Smoleński, Radek Szlaga and Monika Zawadzki -
Curator: Stach Szabłowski
Associate curator: Zuzanna M. Koszuta
For more information, see: www.klopsztanga.de
Temporary Gallery in Cologne
Mauritiuswall 35, Koln
temporary-gallery-cologne.de
Editor: Marta Jazowska
Source: Temporary Gallery Cologne