Collection

Orbaczewska’s stove emits noticeable heat. The warmth, obviously associated with this kind of device, sits in stark contrast to the content of the decorations. On the one hand, there is a kind of reference to “household” and “home”, which usually brings to mind safety, being together, caring for the family. Following a closer look, we see that this object challenges the culturally entrenched ideals. Orbaczewska’s works, including the object described here, can be considered as a discussion with traditional motifs and forms of art or craftsmanship that strengthen stereotypical images, or even the setups of relationships between men and women, marriage and parenthood. Based on a stark contrast between the carrier of tradition and what challenges it, her work becomes a voice of cultural change, softening the boundaries of roles in relationships and introducing new ways of understanding family relationships.

Works from the Kinderturnen series evoke associations with both Byzantine mosaics and art deco aesthetics. Visually delightful, they simultaneously arouse a sense of horror and uneasy questions about the nature of power – how far can one in exerting control over an individual or a group, in this case children unaware that they are being coached?

The artist was inspired by a training manual regarding enhancing children's physical strength and shaping their thinking to ensure they grow up to be “decent citizens.” Orzechowska reinvents the images of training children, allowing them to play and open up to new kinds of games.

In many of her works, the artist traces the discreet forms of manipulation, that are present for example in social engineering techniques used in therapy and obsessions regarding individual and group actions as ways of building relationships in contemporary society.

Works from the Kinderturnen series evoke associations with both Byzantine mosaics and art deco aesthetics. Visually delightful, they simultaneously arouse a sense of horror and uneasy questions about the nature of power – how far can one in exerting control over an individual or a group, in this case children unaware that they are being coached?

The artist was inspired by a training manual regarding enhancing children's physical strength and shaping their thinking to ensure they grow up to be “decent citizens.” Orzechowska reinvents the images of training children, allowing them to play and open up to new kinds of games.

In many of her works, the artist traces the discreet forms of manipulation, that are present for example in social engineering techniques used in therapy and obsessions regarding individual and group actions as ways of building relationships in contemporary society.

Works from the Kinderturnen series evoke associations with both Byzantine mosaics and art deco aesthetics. Visually delightful, they simultaneously arouse a sense of horror and uneasy questions about the nature of power – how far can one in exerting control over an individual or a group, in this case children unaware that they are being coached?

The artist was inspired by a training manual regarding enhancing children's physical strength and shaping their thinking to ensure they grow up to be “decent citizens.” Orzechowska reinvents the images of training children, allowing them to play and open up to new kinds of games.

In many of her works, the artist traces the discreet forms of manipulation, that are present for example in social engineering techniques used in therapy and obsessions regarding individual and group actions as ways of building relationships in contemporary society.

The work takes the form of an art book, consisting of various sizes, monochrome collages, abstract pictures resembling sea waves and six literary essays written by Katarzyna Czeczot, Agnieszka Pindera, Jonas Nobel, Stanisław Ruksza, Agnieszka Taborska, and Bartek Zdunek.

The title of the work is based on a contradiction — the final, the ultimate end and simultaneously an eternal repetition of fate. Today, deadline means a final date for completing the project, but in POW camps during the American Civil War — literally it meant the death that awaited after crossing the line / leaving the designated area of a camp. The sea personifies this contradiction or paradoxical logic — the infinity of the horizon but also the end, the risk of death and being lost in the limitless water. Stanisław Ruksza and Katarzyna Czeczot write about the inevitable entanglement of water and death, as well as the mermaid’s song, Fellini’s soprano singer or the creator of an underwater opera — Juliana Snapper. Orzechowska's work is intended to undergo continual changes, and its completion will be marked by the artist's death.

Religious Implant is part of the Projekt Techno-Sakralizacji Kościoła Katolickiego [Techno-Sacralisation of the Catholic Church Project] series. It reflects on contemporary spirituality in the context of technology. The eponymous implant is an electronic stimulator placed under the skin, or in other words a device meant to control the spheres of faith and social life. As such, the piece evokes associations with popular representations of the Risen Christ, further intensified by the backlight from the light box. The relationship between art, technology, and faith offers a critical reflection on the impact of these fields on the singular experiences of both the individual and society.

Another important dimension of the Religious implant is its references to corporeality and mass culture and aesthetics taken from advertisements that are ubiquitous in public life. It speaks of a world dominated by consumerism and commercialization, also in the sacred sphere.

Kisieland consists of several independent elements: a colour video and an acrylic painting on canvas. The first part is a record of Radziszewski’s meeting with Ryszard Kisiel, an amateur artist from Gdańsk, a pioneer of the gay culture in Poland. The second part of the work is a painting interpretation of Indianka-Szamanka [Indian-Shaman], one of many photographs documenting Kisiel’s performative activities at the turn of 1985 and 1986.

Kisieland fully illustrates not just the field of Karol Radziszewski’s interests, but also the methodology of his work with archives, consisting in queering history, norms, and institutions.

Kisieland is an attempt to build a relationship between the present and the past, revealing forgotten non-normative threads and heroes. Pointing to historical continuity thus becomes a performative activity – it helps to identify and construct the identity of the contemporary queer community. For Radziszewski, the queer archive is an anti-ethnographic, fluid creation that complements and verifies normative narratives, but which, above all, has emancipatory potential.

Kisieland consists of several independent elements: a colour video and an acrylic painting on canvas. The first part is a record of Radziszewski’s meeting with Ryszard Kisiel, an amateur artist from Gdańsk, a pioneer of the gay culture in Poland. The second part of the work is a painting interpretation of Indianka-Szamanka [Indian-Shaman], one of many photographs documenting Kisiel’s performative activities at the turn of 1985 and 1986.

Kisieland fully illustrates not just the field of Karol Radziszewski’s interests, but also the methodology of his work with archives, consisting in queering history, norms, and institutions.

Kisieland is an attempt to build a relationship between the present and the past, revealing forgotten non-normative threads and heroes. Pointing to historical continuity thus becomes a performative activity – it helps to identify and construct the identity of the contemporary queer community. For Radziszewski, the queer archive is an anti-ethnographic, fluid creation that complements and verifies normative narratives, but which, above all, has emancipatory potential.

Chariot was created for the Estrangement exhibition, presented at the Showroom gallery as part of Polska! Year, and relates to the history of London’s Edgware Road, an ancient trade and war route. This area boasts the largest population of migrants from the Middle East in London. During the opening, the artist interacted with the audience – she played with the children, led a horse-drawn parade, and invited passers-by to write on its sides, inscribed with: ‘chariot’, and ‘estrangement’. In Arabic, the two words differ by just a single dot. This is reminiscent of how the Arabic alphabet is treated: with hostility, due to anti-Arab propaganda, or as an exotic ornament due to its calligraphic nature.

The Chariot addresses the question of multiculturalism – because migrations create countries, environments and cities, they are an inseparable part of cultural, technological and social development.

Uberconsciousness Cocktail – not me was created as part of a project entitled Poza Postmodernizm [Beyond Postmodernism], in which Rogulski verified art trends present beyond the Iron Curtain from the perspective of an artist coming from a communist country in Central-Eastern Europe in the 1980s. Confronting these with Western trends led him to not expand the existing concepts describing art, but also to create new ones, which describe the artistic trends emerging throughout the period of transformation. Rogulski constructed his own theoretical proposals, based on the belief that moving beyond the prevalent trends, including postmodernism, can be achieved through internal transformation and thinking beyond the prevailing patterns.

Uberconsciousness Cocktail … is a carefully thought-out concept that demonstrates that every change and development should start with the individual. Hence, Rogulski’s work can be read as the intention of internal transformation, tantamount to a spiritual journey into oneself and finding a wider perspective for interpreting the world anew in the social, cultural and artistic realm.

The installation discusses the three entities that at different historical moments had the fantasy of Madagascar as a Polish colony: ‘Beniowski’, ‘Maritime and Colonial League’, and ‘Janek Simon.’

In the interwar period, Poland – following the example of Western powers – aspired to own colonies. Polish attempts included, among others, Madagascar. The main agent of these activities was the, the publisher of the monthly magazine, Morze [Sea]. In 2006, Janek Simon came across an issue of this publication at an antique shop. The fascination with discovering the scope of Polish ambitions to ‘catch up’ with the West compounded the artist’s disappointment with the instrumentalization of art by Polish cultural diplomacy, which he experienced as a participant of international projects. In this way, the idea for the Polish Year in Madagascar project was born.

In the spring of 2006, Janek Simon travelled to the capital of Madagascar, Antananarivo, with a suitcase full of artworks with the aim of organizing a Polish exhibition — a mockery of official government cultural events. Yet, paradoxically, Simon’s suitcase contained no artworks by Polish artists.

Janek Simon managed to combine the repressed memories of colonial ambitions with a double absence: the lack of a Polish colony in Madagascar and Polish artists at the ‘Polish Year’ exhibition. The artist examines the ideas of Polishness in various ways, confronting visions of magnitude with hang-ups and failures. He breaks the linear story of the colonization of the South-East by the North-West and undermines the divisions into the centre and periphery, victim and executioner, rewriting history textbooks and contemporary postcolonial studies literature.

The video is inspired by Olga Boznańska. Swinarska focused on the painter’s work clothes, an old-fashioned, 19th-century dress and an apron. She rented a similar one from the theatre and arranged her own room to resemble Boznańska’s studio in Paris.

Playing the part of Boznańska, Swinarska says that the dress adds momentum and that thanks to it her gestures become more expressive, emphasizing the importance of the dress in building the artist-painter identity and the medium of painting itself, deemed irrelevant by the contemporary art world. The dress becomes a symbol of the conventional language of images — simultaneously attractive and out-dated.