Zachęta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki: a first time.

Talkin' about 1968, today I finally went to Zachęta, the National gallery of modern art. I have been there a couple of times before but just in the basement, the headquarter of a seriously cool bar of which I can't remember the name.

Zacheta is hosting a temporary exhibition on 1968. Not much on Poland, though. Which kind of disappointed me, as this was somehting I'd really like to see trasposed in art. Being afraid that I won't ever be able to feel it otherwise.

There was this room dedicated to the so called "sex revolution", somehow a bit too strong with the explicit broadcasting of videos that did not seem to offer a deeper level of reading other than the easy sexy-unconventional hit. Or perhaps I just missed it, distracted by all this nudity. Or may be it is just a natural reaction of the local artists to that backword catholic conservatorism that here in Poland seems to be reviving. Something like the Colbert, Family-and-Religion-though of Mr. Tremonti - Italy's treasurer and Mr. Bossi - Italy's leader of the North League, a party representing the interests of some Northern Italians.

However, on a different section of the gallery was also shown a retrospective of Włodzimierz Pawlak. "Painter, performer, poet, art theoretician – he had until now never had either a comprehensive solo exhibition or an exhaustive publication about his work. The Zachęta show is the first retrospective presentation of the artist’s oeuvre, covering the years 1984–2008.
The structure of the exhibition, which presents the paintings in a chronological sequence, has been dictated chiefly by the need to present the main threads and themes of Pawlak’s practice. The first section are works from the Gruppa period (1982–1989), usually referring to contemporary events, politics, or history, as well as works of existential and autobiographical themes. The second section are the Journals and white paintings (1989–2004), a colour the artist believes to be formally and symbolically supreme. Shown here are also the Painted-over Paintings, the artist’s earlier works which he painted white in the early 1990s, thus returning to the issue, tackled in his graduation project and present in his practice since then, of ‘creation-destruction’. The third section features paintings devoted to the analysis of theoretical painting problems, the patrons of which are Kazimir Malevich and Władysław Strzemiński (from 1988), with series such as The History of Colour, Notes on Art, The Logical Space of the Picture. Shown in this section are also Pawlak’s sculptures-objects, built with everyday items, found objects, and painting utensils. In a way, these sculptures are appendixes to the paintings, their three-dimensional, spatial equivalents".

I wanted to post some pictures of his work but there is really not much on the internet, except the new solid cover of this blog.