Seeing with the Body
Artists: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Alicja Bielawska, Andrzej Bielawski, Bożenna Biskupska, Agata Bogacka, Jan Dobkowski, Barbara Falender, Agnieszka Grodzińska, Keith Haring, Zuzanna Hertzberg, Renata Kamińska, Natalia LL, Ewa Partum, Teresa Pągowska, Krystyna Piotrowska, Krystiana Robb-Narbutt, Erna Rosenstein, Adela Szwaja, Teresa Tyszkiewicz, Andy Warhol, Jerzy Ryszard „Jurry“ Zieliński, Anna Żuławska (from the Galeria Studio Collection in Warsaw)
Curatorial team: Natalia Andrzejewska, Dorota Jarecka, Paulina Olszewska
13.05–20.08.2023
OP ENHEIM
Plac Solny 4
Wrocław
Photo: Dzikość, courtesy of OP ENHEIM
The vampire squid lives in the deep ocean waters. It communicates with other members of its species by means of art: it changes the colours of its body and ejects clouds of an ink-like mucus, which it can arrange into various shapes resembling letters. It lights its way with its own fluorescent lamp, powered by an electrical impulse generated on the surface of its body. It is a Kantian animal, as the art theorist Vilém Flusser noted; the world is a product of its consciousness, as it first creates an image of the reality around it and then perceives and recognises it. Imagination and reality are the same thing to it. The soul is the same as the body. The exhibition is inspired by currents of philosophy and aesthetics that are critical of the human age. It draws on the intuition that some contemporary works of art tap into similar regions of sensibility that Flusser discovered in the beautiful eight-armed creature. And also on the conviction that certain artistic events in the 1970s foreshadowed such impulses, when one being tuned in to another on this amplitude of vibration.
The Studio Gallery’s collection was founded by Józef Szajna in 1972 at the Studio Theatre in Warsaw and is one of Poland’s most significant public collections of post-1945 art. It contains more than a thousand objects made in various media. Its main core comprises works by Polish modernist and neo-avant-garde artists, complemented by works by international artists. The collection is not permanently shown in Warsaw, but it is included in Studio Gallery’s projects. Most recently, part of it was presented at the exhibition The Studio Gallery Collection in Warsaw in 2021. The collection is growing all the time, expanding every year with new works included through purchases or donations. This is, of course, a selection. Completely subjective. With a lamp on our heads, wandering through the dark warehouses of the Studio, we look around, communicating with each other using a system of signs that is not fully codified, but always clear to us.