All Mounds Can Be Seen From My Window

All Mounds Can Be Seen from My Window 5.03– –8.05.2016

Krystyna Tołłoczko-Różyska in the main hall of the Municipal Exhibition Pavilion in Krakow, the 1960s, photo: author unknown, from the archive of Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art

Exhibition area in front of the Municipal Exhibition Pavilion in Krakow, photo: Janusz Podlecki, the 1960s, from the Archive of the Historical Museum of the City of Krakow

“All Mounds Can Be Seen From My Window” – the phrase used in the exhibition title is a seductive teaser addressed by the protagonist of Janusz Morgenstern’s film Jowita to his lover. When spoken by Marek Arens, it sounds like an unrealistic promise of making all her dreams come true. It also contains an element of a poetic metaphor of an unreachable ideal and the magnetism of the teenage projection of dreams. This image of the impossible constitutes a moment of manifested protest against the ordinariness of surrounding world. From this perspective, Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art in its present form becomes a promise of an impossible space – a protagonist of a multi-layered institutional story assembled from images, objects, scenes, quotations, and gestures. After all, as the theoretician of “white cube,” Brian O’Doherty noted, “Gestures are a form of invention. They can only be done once, unless everyone agrees to forget them. [...] As an invention, however, the gesture’s patent is its most distinguishing feature – far more than its formal content, if any.”1 As construed by contemporary philosophers, gesture is something that exposes mediality, something that shifts the attention towards the medium of work and makes it visible. This kind of gesture is made in the Gallery through the reintroduction of windows – those most obvious “tools of making things visible” that operate in the zone where institutional policy meets the public and the common.

1 Brian O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space, Berkeley–Los Angeles: University of California Press, [1976] 1999, pp. 69–70.

The history of the Gallery, established in 1949 as the Krakow branch of the Central Office for Art Exhibitions (BWA), together with the subsequent changes of its mission and goals, reflects more general and broader processes of political, social, and artistic transitions, including the understanding of their public significance. The institution’s attempts to find its place both in its own local history, in the microclimate of Krakow’s artistic milieu, as well as on the national and international scene provide the main narrative lines of the exhibition. What was the impact of the Communist chain of BWA galleries on the Gallery’s present form and its social reception? In what sense was its contemporary character shaped by neo-avant-garde artists who moved outside established artistic models and expanded their practice including ephemeral and intermedia elements? Those are just some of the questions related to mechanisms of looking, relations of power, directions of dependence between the observer and the observed, as well as changes in the modes of reception and definition of a work of art.

Exhibition documentation of Stanisław Dróżdż. Notionshapes. Concrete Poetry exhibition, Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art, 12.04–13.05.2001, 15.1 × 10.1 cm, photo: Tomasz Żurek, from the archive of Gallery

Ewa Partum, Stupid Woman performance, 9th International Krakow Meetings, BWA, Krakow, 12.11.1981, 16.9 × 23.4 cm, photo: Stefan Zbadyński, from the archive of Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art

Looking engages the body completely. It dictates its poses and forces gestures. Looking in passing, intent gaze, staring, scanning, and observing – the way we look – exposes our position towards the observed object. On the other hand, it expresses our emotions, such as interest, consternation, leniency, admiration, pride. Photographs that for over fifty years have captured gestures of those who look at art reveal a multiplicity of the ways of perceiving art that challenges viewers, exercises their acuity and observation skills, and trains the eye. The configurations of bodies and facial expressions preserved on photographic film form together a choreography – a lonely body in an abstract space, body in relation with an object, a collection of bodies, looks, movements, and physical relations.

The first case. We discern a single object from the distance while being motionless. We approach it smoothly and slowly.

Top-down and bottom-up, each work, one after another and with no exceptions. It is a film documentation of Henry Moore’s exhibition from 1995. This time, choreography of viewing concerns the movement of the camera. The camera imitates human vision, making a catalogue of objects in moving illustrations. Documentation does not assume the existence of space, a relation between works, a context of an event.

Another example. An opening of the exhibition of metaphoric painting by Anna Günter proved to be a background for a variation on types of looking. Just like at the re-enactment of the first Surrealist exhibition in Paris in 1938, in Jowita, the looks of viewers intersect with the dead look of naked female dummies and dolls invested with Surrealist attributes (telephone, director’s baton, wedding veil, meat grinder).

When analysed more closely, those gestures of looking captured in the Gallery reflect the process of change that has occurred in the way art has been received, experienced, and defined over the last fifty years. Fine arts, visual arts and contemporary art in general, consisting of practices of diverse nature, have broadened the limits of visual experience, including in their repertory of attracting our attention purposeful omissions, flaws of the human visual apparatus, or belated reflections.

Laure Prouvost’s It, Heat, Hit (2010) starts with a message: “This 6-minute film requires all your attention. Each detail of the first part will have a decisive meaning for the second part. The protagonists of the film are happy you are here to join them. They would do anything to have your attention.

They desperately want you to get involved: they need you to exist. If you do not cooperate – leave the room for 6 minutes.”

Just like in a trailer of a box office hit, images change quickly one by one. Attempts to follow them attentively are futile, while pictures, sounds, and words pass unrecognised.

Tautologies and contradictions appear like an avalanche, causing disintegration and a sense of being lost. This film is a trap and a slap. Literally. White spots hit us on the face, the frame grows and curves, and the physicality of our own body reaches us – we can feel the weight of our legs, metal taste in our mouths, a smell that pierces our noses. Prouvost strikes a merciless blow against our perception. She completely dismisses viewers’ repeated attempts to tame visual experience. She plays with our desperate need to arrange images into meanings and narratives.

The intersecting points of view can be interpreted as networks of dependence, connections and relations, that together form the institution’s policy. Some of them are reminiscences from the past, others are made in response to contemporary expectations and the changing political and social situation. The public, the authorities, organisers, artists – those are the people who mark the trajectories of looking, gestures, and approaches.

Stefan Papp, Attention! Children are looking, 1982, insertation in „Sugestie� 1982, no. 5/6 (57/58)

“It is only when art is being created for an individual, only when the artist makes an impact on an individual, he can create for that person a mental world.

The artist formulates a language of painting that can be learned when it is an expression of our shared images and mutual relations.”

Henryk Stażewski, “Sztuka” 1984, No. 4, p. 3

Broadly understood promotion of contemporary culture and art was one of the statute goals of the Office for Art Exhibitions which organised a variety of events to develop new forms of education through art – starting from largely unsuccessful experiments in the form of a travelling exhibition of reproductions of works of art to large-scale activities as part of the Polish Association of Artistic Education or an initiative of the Inter-School Club for Art Lovers. This tradition of promotion of Krakow’s BWA has been consistently continued at Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art since the mid 1990s. It involved among others the activities of the Bunkier Sztuki Club (1997–2012) (a cyclical programme comprised of lectures and discussion panels that brought together wide specialist circles of contemporary art), the still running Bunkier Sztuki Little Club (an initiative of art education for the youngest viewers), as well as Sztuka24h, an online portal started in 2010 (it publishes educational materials on contemporary art dedicated to teachers, parents and children).

Addressing the theme of promotion of art and visual culture, the exhibition puts special emphasis on the communicative aspects of language and presents archive materials and detailed scripts of exhibition tours, plans and programmes of activities related to promotion and education, manifestos and programmes written by the Gallery’s managers and directors.

We are interested in the model of education understood as creating a cognitive dissonance, which initiates the process of learning and finds a reflection in the very structure of the exhibition or a meeting accompanying the exhibiting. This way, we distort and question the alleged linearity of knowledge transmission, as well as neutrality of education. Through this, we would like to invite viewers to discover the factors that shape their reception and other activities related to it, as well as introduce distortions in them (for example those caused by flaws of means of communication, illustrated by the documentation of a lecture by Richard Demarco in Bunkier Sztuki in

2000 where he addressed the process of disappearance. Recorded on the VHS tape, Demarco “disappeared” as well due to the degradation of the medium of recording).

Special attention should be paid to historical artistic projects that transform potential viewers into active participants of events, including the action by Stefan Papp ATTENTION! Children are looking (the first edition in 1982; followed by 1990, 1997), and a project

by Janusz Byszewski called Art of Action for/with Children (1984). Next to the viewers, the authors of content transmitted by the public institution are honoured in the recoding made on the basis of archive materials and interviews with former employe­ es of the Gallery’s education department, as well as through a collage that includes: historical photographs, plans of education activities, as well as surveys conducted among the viewers. Historical context of creating the situation of participation (or a lack thereof) in the creative process is further developed by a film by Agata Biskup and Przemysław Czepurko titled Musicians II (2013), which refers to the famous documentary by Kazimierz Karabasz and to Azorro Group’s work Family, which is a playful, somewhat grim image of “a perfect situation,” a dream of every educator, as well as artist and curator.

With our reference to the tradition of an institution engaged in promotion, we would like to pose a question why some events achieve success and become remembered, while others are forgotten. As an ins­ titution that seeks to include the viewers’ voices in the public discourse on art, we are curious about the reception of past and present events realised here.

What were and what are expectations that are set for us? How and to what extent the participation of local community formulates the institution’s profile?

— deadline — dyskurs — efemeryczny — interwencja — mapować — kontekst — kreatywna — swoisty — proces

In 1986, guests who attended the opening of Sculpture of the Year, an exhibition at Krakow’s BWA, could witness an original Dada­ ist happening by Łukasz Skąpski, titled Authors’ Evening [Wieczór autorski]. The artist’s noisy sculpture with a small pinwheel was accompanied by a table covered with American flag by which seated were poets from American Committee group. Its name came from the reference to their plan to leave for the US and the resulting need to collect money for this purpose. Skąpski began his happening with reading out a text titled Brief Proof of the Irrelevance of Sculpture, where he proposed that sculpture sho­ uld be substituted in the exhibition by poetry, for contempora­ ry art is based on “communication, text, language, and symbol.”

After his performance, the attending poets (including Jarosław Baran, Wojciech Bockenheim, Manuela Gretkowska, Robert Te­ kieli, Cezary Michalski, Paweł Filas and Andrzej Kumor) read out their poems and then they spread around the room making fun of collected objects. In consequence, Skąpski was called in to the director’s office and was forced to remove his sculpture from the exhibition. His action was a humorous exposure of the relation between art and language, especially the process when text enters the medium of art. At the same time, it questioned the existing traditions of Conceptual art, for the language it evoked was not an austere, pseudoscientific language used by this mo­ vement, but the language of poetry. Yet, his invitation of poets to the exhibition space brought an unexpected outcome. Their activity got out of control, annexing the space of the Gallery. Me­ taphorically speaking, poetry invited to the Gallery ran rampant and would not be tamed. The medium of language made a step outside the frameworks of the happening.

30 years after those events, to some extent we put Skąp­ ski’s postulates into practice – instead of showing artworks, we

put on display words, yet they are not poetic texts. By inserting language into the material space of the exhibition, we would like to emphasise the materiality of language as such. We are interes­ ted in how the language we use when we talk and write about art is reflected in the exhibitions and events we organise. How does it fill the space and shape the realities of contemporary art? What kind of language have we used 50 years ago, what language do we use now, and what will be used in fifty years time? Can the ana­ lysis of language that we use in reference to art tell us something more about art itself? How do the words and grammatical structu­ res influence the way we think about art? Can we take control over language? How do we imagine its shape and what would we like our new language to include? Although those are very important questions, they have not been widely discussed in recent years.

The only wider discussion on this topic occurred thanks to the text published in the American magazine “Triple Canopy” on the so-called International Art English (canopycanopycanopy. com/contents/international_art_english). Authors of the artic­ le (Alix Rule and David Levine) conducted an analysis of tens of press releases sent by “e-flux” via a newsletter that reaches tho­ usands of art professionals. In an amusing way they showed the specificity of language used in such materials, which is very dif­ ferent both in its lexicon as well as grammatical structures from the standard English. Limited to 650 words, one photograph and a link, the newsletter contents have become a kind of standardised way of presenting events and exhibitions, consolidating the domi­ nance of the English language in the field of communication on contemporary visual arts (which brings to mind the famous work

by Mladen Stilinović – a flag with a caption “An Artist Who Cannot Speak English Is No Artist”, 1993). The text finished with a playful proposition of treating some press releases as a kind of poetry.

This humorous and not entirely serious text provoked a response on the part of many artists (including Martha Rosler and Hito Steyerl who published their replies in “e-flux”), who em­ phasised that the attempt to maintain the model standard of the English language is a form of control and power over discourse, established by a privileged group of people – those who set those models. Meanwhile, language is nobody’s property, but a common good, shaped by identities and intentions of various groups of users. This is perversely proved by online IAE generators (Jasper Rigole’s generator, “artist statement” from artybollocks.com, as well as project 500 letters from 500letters.org – a surprisingly ac­ curate generator of biographical notes). It is a pity that it is quite rare (perhaps with the exception of Jennifer Higgie’s frieze.com/ issue/article/please_release_me) when our attention is drawn to their predictability and dullness, especially when we consider the time dedicated to their production by promotion specialists.

The discussion of IAE, though interesting and insightfully exposing various contexts of this phenomenon, has not moved outside the level of general observations. There are few texts that discuss particular notions, such as project, which in recent years has become a term that frames all kinds of artistic activity. Its philosophical analysis was presented by Boris Groys in his The Loneliness of the Project (ny-magazine.org/PDF/Issue%201.1.%20 Boris%20Groys.pdf), where he pointed to the alienating role of projects and the fact that an individual or a group of people who initiate a project, become separated from the rest of society. Ac­ cording to Groys, projects have recently substituted art works, while documentation that accompanies them effects a turn to­ wards the future. His text exposes the unknown subtext of the word project, listing philosophical, socio-political, and economic ideas that help disassemble its semantics. But what about the

meaning of other words? What exactly happens in the context of language when the artist turns producer, when readers are published instead of catalogues, when visitors turn into clients/ consumers/viewers, and institutions turn into corporations?

In the exhibition space we present a series of notions used by contemporary lexicon of art, as well as artistic and institutio­ nal projects, e.g. Future Vocabulary initiated in 2014 by BAK (ba­ sis voor actuele kunst) in Utrecht, which makes a diagnosis that the present is a time of the interval between two major orders.

Symposia, summer schools, and exhibitions, partly documented and available online, concentrate on the construction of a dictio­ nary of the future, which would include such terms as survival, constellation, or the posthuman. Another proposition of buil­ ding a new language is Stephen Wright’s publication-dictionary Toward a Lexicon of Usership, published by Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven on the occasion of an exhibition on activism in art (Museum of Arte Útil, 2013–2014). Wright’s central term in the category of usership, which challenges ideology defined by such notions as spectatorship, expert culture, and ownership. Artists, including Michael Portnoy and Dan Fox, also join in the process of shaping the future of art, developing a book on new genres in art. This time, the framework for reflection on language and art coupled with it is provided by an art project, intended as non-academic and non-institutional. The authors’ humorous and surprising ide­ as liberate our imagination, evoking in us a momentary sensation of having control over language.

Zachęta Group exhibition, 1968, Pavilion, hall on the 1st floor, BWA the Municipal Exhibition Pavilion, 10.7 × 10.6 cm, photo: author unknown, from the archive of Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art

Krystyna Tołłoczko-Różyska at work, 1940s, photo: author unknown, from National Archive in Krakow, signed 29/2420/79, p. 4

Over a half a century ago the attention of readers of one of Krakow’s newspapers was captured by a catching headline: “The Exhibition Pavilion in Planty Park in finally open!” The preceding evening – on September 11, 1965 – some of them might have been among the crowd of distinguished guests that have come to the inauguration of the Municipal Exhibition Pavilion. This moment closed an almost decade-long difficult process of turning “Esplanada” café into an exhibition space dedicated to contemporary art.

The decision to demolish an Art Nouveau pavilion by Jan Zawiejski and to erect in its place a modern building for what was then an enormous sum of money – initially seven and a half million złoty, but finally reaching twice this amount – provoked a heated debate both in the local artistic milieu as well as among Krakow’s citizens. It was possibly Bolesław Drobner, an MP and the Head of the Commission of Culture and Arts, who was responsible for commissioning Krystyna Tołłoczko-Różyska to provide the architecture design for the gallery. Originally from the pre-war Lviv, she was a representative of the first generation of Polish Modernist architects. When she took this task, Tołłoczko-Różyska had to face considerable limitations dictated by the shape of the historical frontage as well as the necessity to integrate into the new building the historical structure of the 18th-century granary.

Her initial concept, which involved opening exhibition space onto a glass-walled patio with a winter garden, caused a radical division of the appraising committee. Persuaded by the majority of critical opinions, Różyska eliminated the green courtyard and expanded exhibition space instead. She designed it as a sequence of smoothly intertwining spaces of diverse sizes, with a line of windows running along the façade in the first floor and a roof with innovative glass cupolas that filled the exhibition space with natural light. This functionalist interior was hidden behind a monumental, sculptural façade created in collaboration with Stefan Borzęcki and Antoni Hajdecki. Made of concrete casts, the elevation made a visual reference to the medieval city walls and was the longest discussed element of the structure. Only the third version of the designed found the approval of the investors. This radical monument to modernity in the very heart of the historic city of Krakow was skilfully integrated into the surrounding park, linking it both through a garden design along the façade as well as with a kind of concrete footpath that connected the walking alley of Planty Park with the entrance portal of fluid, openwork form reminiscent of the work of Henry Moore (incidentally, Krakow’s CBWA presented his exhibition in the late 1959).

The symbolic space of Dolna Gallery, which is a remnant of old medieval cellars, hosts an exhibition that introduces the remarkable circumstances of the creation of the Municipal Exhibition Pavilion in three interlinked contexts: related to social issues, architecture, and urban planning. The multiplicity of archive materials, photographs and quotations reveal the turbulent reception of the new exhibition space as well as the remarkable nature of forms of architecture and sculpture – both the ones found only on paper as well as those realised in practice. The

display explores an exceptional concept of the way the building’s function was integrated with the urban texture, namely, as a part of a “cultural quarter” and a neighbour of the nearby Palace of Art and Stary Theatre. An artistic filter for this narrative is provided by a multimedia work by Anna Zaradny titled BruitBrut, inspired by the history and transformations of the original project, as well as its form in the following decades: the advancing transformations of the interiors and changes introduced to the author’s arrangement by covering the Brutalist façade with a café pavilion of dubious architectural quality.

“I suppose most of us will eagerly agree that this infill in the architecture of the historic centre should be modern in nature. This modernity should be nonaggressive and consistent.”

Stanisław Murczyński, Co-appraisal for the initial architecture design of the MEP (MPW) in Krakow by Planty Park, 1959, materials from the archive of Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art

Krystyna Tołłoczko-Różyska (1909–2001) – architect, visual artist and designer.

Representative of the first generation of Polish modernists.

Graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at the Lviv University of Technology (1938). Her practice involved various fields of art, such as interior design, furniture design, as well as fashion and accessories design. Her earliest works of the postwar period were designs of mountain structures (stations of cable car and hostel in Szyndzielnia, 1951–1957). Her first prestigious commission was the student’s house at Academic Estate of the Marie Curie University in Lublin as well as the Social and Services House, the so-called Student’s Hut (1949_1965). Her most well known work, however, is the building of the Municipal Exhibition Pavilion in Krakow, at present called Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art (1959–1965). Moreover, in Krakow, Różyska made a series of important designs: reconstruction and adaptation of “Monopol” Hotel (1963–1967), the interior of Actor’s Club SPATiF and “Orbis” Office (1966–1967), as well as shopping pavilions in Krowodrza, Azory and Mistrzejowice districts (1970–1976).

Maciej Jerzmanowski, Walk, 1981

A characteristic feature of works made by artists in the 1970s, who from the present perspective seem to have represented an artistic and ideological formation defined by art historians as the neo-avant-garde, was desacralisation of established notions that defined art, artwork, and the artist. By transcending definitions and questioning dominating models, artists disseminated art’s new identity and extended its potential by including actions that were intermedia, ephemeral, and time-based. In the creative atmosphere of this period artists focused on the phenomenon of creation, bypassing the requirement of the material realisation of an artwork. This way, they built new notions and constructed a unique grammar of contemporary visual culture.

Works and documents presented at the exhibition are examples of deep intellectual changes orchestrated within the field of art, which have additionally reformulated the distribution of culture and the institutional functioning of artists.

Many aspects of histories and artefacts presented here contain the need to transcend and leave behind the established and tested solutions and move beyond the gallery space and the accepted exhibition formats towards participation in the everyday rhythm of life. This kind of practice often manifested itself with ironic actions that situated the artist’s activity on the verge of the commonplace and the unnoticeable (Maciej Jerzmanowski, Janusz Kaczorowski, Maria Pinińska-Bereś).

Works typical for the Krakow artistic milieu and young artists of the 1970s, though hardly recognised by contemporary critics, are very important for local circles and prove rather

intriguing in the broader context of the art of this decade.

Documentation that has been preserved until the present reveals artists who shaped the form of young art of that period as influenced by key manifestos of that era, such as Art after Philosophy (Joseph Kosuth, 1969) – with its global appeal, or Art in the Post-Artistic Era (Jerzy Ludwiński, 1970) – significant for Polish artistic life. These works manifest a special respect for the tradition of culture that defines engagement in an artistic process as a responsible action, at times close to scientific research, supported by intellectual analysis and deep awareness of the meaning of applied forms and motifs (e.g. Marek Chlanda). They are perhaps less revolutionary in their treatment of morals, yet they are not devoid of youthful energy and sensibility, above all being radical intellectually.

Presented artworks are filled with games and linguistic paradoxes that visualise the multiplicity of possible associations of particular problems (e.g. Artur Tajber). Moreover, they are characterised by exceptional, though at times intimate irony and an endearing sense of absurdity of surrounding reality (Wincenty Dunikowski-Duniko, among others). Over time, when authoritarian Communist system turned into a military dictatorship, they manifested aggressive contestation, retreat or emigrated form the country (e.g. AWACS).

Mateusz Kula, digital collage for Incubators, vessels, bladders, 2016

Monika Niwelińska, ADDING LIGHT Adding Light changes when exhibition is shown to the viewers. It absorbs the energy of daylight to later return the gleam hidden in matter. Shining depends on the cycle of day and night. Adding light makes the inside dependent on the outside, thus making the interior of Bunkier Sztuki a part of the process of the changes of nature.

Monika Niwelińska’s work addresses the perennially intriguing question of the emanation of light, absorption, reflection, and – in reference to the Gallery – also its distribution in a particular space. The artist is interested in the unique quality of natural chemical materials – photoluminescent substances that are capable of storing and emitting light. The work develops her earlier reflections on the process of change of artistic structures and values inscribed in the moment of creation, and their disappearance during the work’s subsequent life or its use. The project develops a concept where events taking place within the frameworks of an artwork are at least partly hidden from the viewer’s sight.

In the project made in the Gallery space the artist analyses episodes from the history of a particular topography of the place that was once illuminated by the sun shining through skylights in the ceiling. This intriguing solution, designed by the Gallery’s architect Krystyna Tołłoczko-Różyska in the 1960s, soon proved utopian. The roof started leaking.

Andris Eglītis, from the series It takes imagination to build reality, installation, 2016 Acquired for the Collection as part of the project “The boundaries of artwork. Enhacement of Bunkier Sztuki Collection.”

Katarzyna Krakowiak, Untitled, sound installation, 2015 Acquired for the Collection as part of the project “Remembering. Collection of Bunkier Sztuki 2015.�

Yane Calovski, Something laid over something else, 2016 mixed media installation synthetic rubber, stainless steel, graphite The installation consists of separate entities formulated in terms of the contextual particulars rather than in terms of general form or function.

I try to understand the museum is a social and political construct, highly charged and problematic. It is a physical manifestation of power, where we are left with the intention to layer meaning, reciprocity, paradox, and plurality.

Therefore, the work is meant to responds to the dynamic and the cosmogony of the multiplicity of knowledge be that historical, material, or functional, a set of materializations that portray the space as a process staged in architectural setting.

Yane Calovski, Something laid over something else, 2016, installation detail, photo: Yane Calovski, courtesy of artist

In Autumn 1949, the Central Office for Art Exhibitions (CBWA) in Warsaw, which had been founded several months earlier, has created its Krakow branch. It was supposed to ensure the appropriate nature of exhibitions in South-East Poland and make sure its activities were in compliance with the current political line of the country. In other words, its task was to supervise and verify social activist organisations that had been playing the role of leaders of Krakow’s spectators of contemporary art, that is, the Society of the Friends of Fine Arts (TPSP) and the Association of Polish Artists and Designers (ZPAP). However, the branch of the central institution did not receive its own office and for some dozen years had to use venues that belonged to other institutions.

Initially, it was located in one of the rooms of the Visual Artists’ House of the Association in Łobzowska Street; later it moved to exhibition rooms, several storage rooms and offices for administration at the Palace of Art, erected at the turn of the centuries in Szczepański Square by the Society of the Friends of Fine Arts. Homelessness of the new institution was further complicated by relations bet­ ween the main players of exhibiting scene in Krakow, for ideological and competence conflicts were joined by typically Communist problems with space. In consequence, the

years 1949–1965 – until the CBWA received its newly built Municipal Exhibition Pavilion – there was an unprecedented yet largely politically forced collaboration. Despite arguments about unpaid bills for renting space, borrowing ushers and growing heating costs, CBWA, TPSP and ZPAP regularly opened together new spring and autumn salons, exhibitions of artists on the occasion of the 1st of May celebrations, as well as presentations of marine painting. In the 1950s, it was especially difficult to tell apart the work of CBWA and the TPSP: their joined names can be found in opening pages of catalogues, posters, announcements and invitations.

The mid-1950s saw the emergence of an unofficial division of tasks and competences: the CBWA was responsible for contacts with higher officials, made reports, and covered budget expenses; the TPSP, on the other hand, worked directly with artists, arranged exhibitions and communicated with the press, radio, and the television. Some activities were undertaken together, which often brought about small arguments or personal remarks. The most dangerous ideological discussions and controlling ambitions of the Warsaw central office were discretely mollified by two representatives of the interwar intelligentsia: Dr. Jan Mycielski (1901–1972), the first

and long-term director of Krakow’s CBWA, and Professor Karol Estreicher (1906–1984), who since 1953 actively participated in the works of the TPSP – first as a member of the board and a vice-president, later, since 1957, as a president. The character and social connections of the elder of them – a pre-war lawyer, painter and aristocrat, married to Hanna Bal, the daughter of Maria “Kinia” Balowa, a muse of the Young Poland’s artists – prevented him from intervening into concepts of proposed exhibitions. The Count merely co-organised such events, including coordination of special exhibitions sent from Warsaw, which celebrated anniversaries of the October Revolution and the Nazi attack on the USSR, as well as introduced the art of the countries of the Soviet block: Soviet printmaking, Romanian political caricature, or Ukrainian visual arts. After the Thaw of 1956 the dependence between the CBWA and the TPSP gradually became less tight.

Step by step, the latter regained its pre-war control over its organisation and venue, while in 1962, when the network of the CBWA was decentralised, the Krakow branch was moved under the authority of municipal structures and turned into the Office for Art Exhibitions (BWA). The final division took place in 1965, when the BWA took over the Municipal Exhibition Pavilion that stood in front

of the Palace of Art. A new time has come, when the foremost position was taken by the ZPAP and the organisers of the International Print Biennial – but this is an entirely different story.

The presented display of archive materials constitutes a kind of visual essay that is composed in the space of the building, whose windows present a view of the Palace of Art – a witness of past dependence. Documents, notes, invitations, minutes, photographs, and posters traced in the archives of TPSP, ZPAP, the Town Hall of Krakow and Zachęta – the National Gallery of Art (inheritor of the Warsaw CBWA) construct a picture of the less known episodes from the history of the present Bunkier Sztuki. They tell us about the relations and mechanisms that governed the collaboration between Krakow’s institutions, as well as present technical background of exhibition practice over half a century ago. A symbolic closure of this narrative can be found in the collection of sculptures and a video documentation placed in the opposite end of the room that represent another untold fragment of the Gallery’s history. They expose less admirable episodes in the institution’s activity related to the collection of artworks and organisation of the collection. This fact is testified by artworks whom fate – when it brought them to the Gallery – did

not appreciate well enough to introduce them into the frameworks of the collection. Deprived of names of their authors and titles, they have lost the privilege of respectable treatment.

Different yet equally dramatic was the history of the works that entered the collection and were dispersed with it – this process reached its peak in 1993, when the best part of the collection was put on auction. Presented documents of this event, initiated by the authorities’ pressure and inability to provide the works with appropriate storing conditions, provides a poignant reminder of social problems faced by the Gallery, bringing to mind a very heated protest of local art circles against the auction.

A point of reference for the historical reflection is provided by new works by Polish and international artists which metaphorically refer to the transformations and complex history of the institution. The work by a Latvian artist Andrisa Eglitisa reflects images and sculptures shown in the spaces on the Palace of Art in the period of Socialist Realism whose main tenets – at least according to its official programme – were safeguarded by the CBWA. The Macedonian artist Yane Calovski searches deep inside the piling layers of the past exposing in his three-part installation the problem of obliteration, disappearance and wear stemming from the passing of time. Artistic

intervention made by Katarzyna Krakowiak in the structure of the ceiling describes with sound the usually bypassed overarching surface, as well as symbolically reanimates the movement of air in the building, obstructed by the past transformations of its interior. Thanks to the actions undertaken by contemporary artists once the most spectacular exhibition space sees the past, the future, and the present intermingle, spinning a story about fragility and transience, about forgetting and bringing back memory.

Maciej Jerzmanowski, Peryskop, 1977

“Exhibition Pavilion” What is the role of a curator today? What kind of theoretical and practical tools does he or she employ to construct exhibitions and art projects? What kind of models of practices do we identify among professionals? What is performative curating? Those are merely several of many detailed issues that concern the contemporary role of curator, constituting at the same time an introduction to the professionalization of the research on the phenomenon of artistic production as seen from the perspective of project management.

To provide an answer to those and other questions Bunkier Sztuki Gallery has launched a new multifunctional space – the “Exhibition Pavilion” (PW) – situated in-between two main exhibition spaces.

Its name refers directly to the one present on the building’s façade, which was given it by the Gallery’s architect, Krystyna Tołłoczko‑Różyska in 1965.

The „Pavilion” is not merely an exhibition space. It is also a venue for workshops, discussion panels, seminars and meetings of open reading groups reflecting on models and strategies of curating, the history of exhibition practice, the theory and practice of formulating narratives in exhibition space, as well as on intellectual property rights. The

„Pavilion” is dedicated both to professionals (art critics, curators, cultural scholars, architects, educators, designers, and artists) as well as to students of various fields and all those interested in learning about and analysing mechanisms of institutions, the collaboration between curator, artist, and art critic both historically as well as in the present. We would like our diversified programme of events to include also the organisation powerbase as well as its connections with theoretical frameworks of exhibitions which up to now have been in the centre of attention. Our main goal is to professionalise the contexts of knowledge about the work of curator and the work of cultural institution in international perspective, as well as to start collaboration with other institutions that have extensive experience in working with projects that move beyond the established patterns and exhibition models.

The interior design of the “Pavilion” by the Krakow-based studio BudCud (Mateusz Adamczyk, Agata Woźniczka) facilitates multiplicity of functions and transformable nature of space required for its diverse purposes. The mezzanine overlooks the information board and a specialised library of Polish and international publications on curatorial practices. The reading room is divided from exhibition space with a Wi-Fi access space with working area that can be used on occasion of meetings or workshops by a larger number of participants.

The launch of “Exhibition Pavilion” is also a symbolic continuation of important conferences that problematised the way the institution works, which took place in 2002 – “Four voices (ad hoc). Gallery: dissection of discourse” and “Polyphony of Voices.” Following this historical trace, we would like the Pavilion to become a futurist workshop facilitating the creation of new artwork formats and the exchange of reflections from corresponding field of at and science.

In 2016, the invited guests of the Gallery will include Binna Choi (CASCO, Utrecht), Ann Demeester (Franz Hals Museum, Haarlem), Maria Hlavajova (basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht), Alexander Koch (KOW, Berlin) and Aneta Szyłak (Alternativa Foundayion, Gdansk).

The space will be open during the Gallery’s opening hours.

Exhibition space at the 1st floor of the Municipal Exhibition Pavilion in Krakow, the 1960s, photo: author unknown, the archive of Bunkier Sztuki Gallery

Take part in a programme of events organised on occasion of All Mounds Can Be Seen From My Window: – a series of guided tours of the exhibition following several different narrative lines developed by our curators; – meetings with artists (Andris Eglītis, Yane Calovski, Monika Niwelińska, Mateusz Kula); – lectures related to historical figures and events, including Małgorzata Radkiewicz’s talk about “Artists and young ladies from respectable homes,” a lecture on Krakow’s women in the 1950s and 1960s, a meeting about the Exhibition Pavilion’s architect, Krystyna Tołłoczko-Różyska, a meeting about the author of Attention! Children are looking, Stefan Papp; – exhibition closing events, including a discussion panel on Modernism in Krakow, as well as artistic action by Janusz Byszewski, a co-founder of the legendary Laboratory of Creative Education (developed specially for Bunkier Sztuki’s visitors).

Exact dates of meetings will be published on our website and our Facebook fanpage.

“Ask. We will tell!”

Organised groups and individual visitors are welcome to take part in guided tours of the exhibition available during our opening hours (Wed–Sun, 11 am–6 pm).

Prior booking required (min. 3 days in advance of your visit) at bucka@bunkier.art.pl, tel. +48 12 422 10 52.

Cost: 3 zł plus admission ticket (groups should include a minimum of 10 persons).

Main entrance to the Municipal Exhibition Pavilion, the 1960s, photo: Daniel Zawadzki, from the archive of Bunkier Sztuki Gallery

Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art Szczepański sq. 3a, Krakow bunkier.art.pl Director: Magdalena Ziółkowska

All mound can be seen from my window 5.03–8.05.2016

Publication accompanying the All mound can be seen from my window exhibition

Featured artists: AWACS (Peter Grzybowski, Maciej Toporowicz), Azorro (Oskar Dawicki, Igor Krenz, Wojciech Niedzielko, Łukasz Skąpski), Agata Biskup i Przemysław Czepurko, Janusz Byszewski, Yane Calovski, Marek Chlanda, Wincenty Dunikowski‑Duniko, Roman Dziadkiewicz, Andris Eglītis, Peter Grzybowski, Maciej Jerzmanowski, Janusz Kaczorowski, Konger (Marian Figiel, Władysław Kaźmierczak, Marcin Krzyżanowski, Artur Tajber), Katarzyna Krakowiak, Mateusz Kula, Monika Niwelińska, Stefan Papp, Maria Pinińska‑Bereś, Michael Portnoy, Laure Prouvost, Artur Tajber, Raša Todosijević, Krystyna Tołłoczko-Różyska, Zbigniew Warpechowski, Mieczysław Wejman, Anna Zaradny

Edited by: Anna Żołnik

Coordination: Dorota Bucka, Renata Zawartka, Jolanta Zawiślak Exhibition design: Agata Biskup, Przemysław Czepurko (współpraca Michał Borecki) Graphic identity: Agata Biskup

Design, typesetting, preparation for printing: Agata Biskup ISBN: 978-83-62224-51-7 Publisher: Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art Edition: 1000 Krakow 2016

Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art has taken all the necessary steps and made extended efforts to identify the owners of copyrights to the works. Despite our good will and the measures we took, this was not possible. Therefore, anyone in possession of information about the authors of these works is requested to contact the Gallery.

Curators: Anna Bargiel, Paulina Hyła, Magdalena Kownacka, Lidia Krawczyk, Anna Lebensztejn, Kinga Olesiejuk, Aneta Rostkowska, Krzysztof Siatka, Karolina Vyšata, Magdalena Ziółkowska

Translation: Karolina Kolenda

Honorary Patronage: Prezydent Miasta Krakowa Jacek Majchrowski

Partners: Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Sztuk Pięknych w Krakowie

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