We are pleased to announce that the grant application submitted by the National Museum in Gdańsk for the project “Development of the Contemporary Art Collection of the National Museum in Gdańsk” has been approved by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. The project has been awarded funding in the amount of 200,000.00 PLN.

Thanks to the MKiDN grant, the museum has acquired works by Grzegorz Klaman: the sculpture “Man Carrying a Turtle” and two photographs, “Solidarity Guerilla #4” and “Solidarity Guerilla #5”. These works expand the contemporary art collection of the National Museum in Gdańsk and will be incorporated into the holdings of NOMUS, the New Museum of Art in Gdańsk.

Grzegorz Klaman, “Man Carrying a Turtle”, 1989, sculpture

This work is a large-scale sculptural object and an example of the New Expression movement, which until now has not been represented in the MNG collection. The figurative form of “Man Carrying a Turtle” and its brutalist aesthetics make the work a striking manifesto of individual suffering during the terror of martial law in Poland, felt with particular intensity in Gdańsk. It is the last in a series of figurative wooden sculptures created by the artist between 1985 and 1989. Some of these are held in national collections, including the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko (“Patrzący”, 1986, purchased in 1992) and the National Museum in Warsaw (“Burzyciel”, 1987, acquired in 1988). The representative, international significance of works from this period is evidenced by their acquisition for the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seoul (“Figure Holding Fate”, 1987, and a variation of this work from 1988, “New Buddha”, 1988). The object will become part of the museum’s collection and will be preserved as an example of the artistic expression of the 1980s, from which the “new Gdańsk school” emerged.

Grzegorz Klaman, “Solidarity Guerilla #4”, 2016, photograph
Grzegorz Klaman, “Solidarity Guerilla #5”, 2016, photograph

The photographs from the series “Solidarity Guerilla” document staged sessions using a prototype guerrilla vehicle built from a battery-powered industrial cart and mock weapons, with participants dressed in uniform green work overalls. The works were created as part of the research and exhibition project “Metropolis” carried out at CSW Kronika in Bytom. The sessions took place in the apocalyptic landscape of an abandoned industrial facility in Lower Silesia. In many of his projects, Klaman addresses transformations in the world of labour, the erosion of the Solidarity myth and alternative historical narratives.

Co-funded by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund, a state-designated special-purpose fund, within the task: Development of the Contemporary Art Collection of the National Museum in Gdańsk.