16-12-2009

07-02-2010

Poland, Wroclaw
gallery Awangarda, BWA Wroclaw, Wita Stwosza 32

Posted by: bwa-wroclaw-galleries-of-contemporary-art

Category: Exhibition

Field: Visual arts

The exhibition presented at the BWA Awangarda Gallery in Wrocław is the first serious attempt to illuminate one of the most important artistic phenomena of post-war Polish art: the artistic duo Zofia Kulik and Przemysław Kwiek (KwieKulik) and their collective works from 1971 to 1987. KwieKulik’s work, which is radically unique in the history of the neo-avant-garde in Central Europe, is seen through a prism of their socio-political engagement and their uncompromising, bold criticism of their surrounding reality.

KwieKulik, the talented students of architect Oskar Hansen at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, were the first artists to conceive a radical political turn to Hansen’s theory of the Open Form. Since the beginning of the 1970s, KwieKulik pioneered the transformation of artistic practice into one of social experimentation, more laboratory than studio, creating artistic groups that promoted values and models of a non-authoritarian social system. As part of their agenda, KwieKulik sought to reconcile artistic praxis with everyday life. In a particularly merciless fashion, the duo fulminated against conformism, lack of ideals, cynicism, and hypocrisy: the ‘qualities’ that were the fundamental compound of community life in the People’s Republic of Poland.

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