South likes: The Night of the Great Season at Kunsthalle Mulhouse, Mulhouse
Jakub Julian Ziolkowski, Planet, 2012, oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist, Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw and Hauser & Wirth, Zürich
South likes: The Night of the Great Season at Kunsthalle Mulhouse, Mulhouse
The Night of the Great Season
Kunsthalle Mulhouse, Mulhouse, France
19 February – 11 May, 2014
Facing a young generation of Polish artists who retrieved the historical heritage of Surrealism in Poland, The Night of the Great Season traces the influence of this artistic movement from the 1930s until our days. Possibly due to the lumbering prevalence of a Catholic culture, or to other reasons related to the troubled history of Poland, Surrealism followed a different historical course in Poland than the one normally acknowledged in the book of Art History. Opened by the drawings of Bruno Schulz, artist and writer shot in the head by a Nazi officer in 1942, the exhibition investigates the influence of Surrealist techniques in the representation of mental visions, subconscious imagery and unsettling fantasies. These heritage continued for the whole XX century, for example with the work of the artist and theatre director Tadeusz Kantor, who already in the 1950s started experimenting with mannequins during his live actions; or through the work of Erna Rosenstein, founder of the second Krakow Group in 1957, influenced by her travel to Paris in 1937-38 as well as by the writings of Georges Bataille. The long-forgotten figure of Alina Szapocznikow, a survivor of WWII and of the Holocaust, represent another different perspective on Surrealism, with her disarticulated vision of the female’s body which express the tension between the erotic fetishism for objects and a more intimate vision of corporality. The presence of three young Polish artists close the exhibition proving the strong influence of Surrealism of current artistic practices in Poland. Agnieszka Polska presents her photographic reworking of archival material, which are coupled with the coloured and obsessive vision of Jakub Julian Ziolkowski’s work and with the manifold references that inspire Tomasz Kowalski’s paintings.
Michelangelo Corsaro
Tomasz Kowalski, Untitled (tongue), 2012, oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Carlier Gebauer, Berlin
Erna Rosenstein , Stan Sie, 1988, oil on canvas. Courtesy of Piotr Nowicki Collection and Polish Modern Art Foundation, Warsaw
Alina Szapocznikow, Autoportrait II, 1966, bronze. Courtesy of Piotr Stanislawski Loevenbruck Gallery, Paris
The Night of the Great Season, installation shot, 2014, Kunsthalle Mulhouse
