Artipedia - Arts News

Zacheta National Gallery of Art

Wilhelm Sasnal
Years of Struggle
27.11.2007 - 2.03.2008

Zacheta National Gallery of Art
Pl. Malachowskiego 3
00-916 Warsaw, Poland
tel. (+48 22) 827 58 54
Tues - Sun 12 to 8p.m.

http://www.zacheta.art.pl

Wilhelm Sasnal’s painting is the product of impressions of different kinds that affect the artist not just through his sense of sight. His paintings are situated between a striving to explore reality and the need to interpret its various, often not popular contexts. They concentrate on the techniques of painting and through this also investigates the physiology of vision. They show from what elements a painting emerges, and in what conditions begins the process of seeing and the particular process of ‘becoming’ a painting. This process coincides with a further element that is just as important in the artist’s work: his highly original iconography (photographs, films, comics, music) that cause the world presented in his works to undergo a fragmentation into single events from the field of personal experiences or on the contrary of significant contexts from a “common history” or the space of a society in a particular place and time.

The title of the exhibition, “Years of Struggle”, is a citation from a propaganda film about General Karol Swierczewski, but is also the title of a painting with which the artist struggled for a long time. At the exhibition are presented paintings from the last few years, whose striking stylistic diversity, stretched between figuration and abstraction, takes up a game with a range of the conventions of modernism. In this selection of paintings can be seen the whole spectrum of the themes which are today of interest to the artist.

At the exhibition in Zacheta are shown paintings from the last few years, loaned from the artist’s studio and from collections in Poland and abroad. Their themes demonstrate the major contexts of Sasnal’s work, such as the merging of pre-war modernism with autobiographic elements (the series “Moscice” 2005), years of struggle and war (the series “Partisans” 2005, Kielce – Cracow, 2007), the holocaust (the series of paintings “Maus”, 2001, made on the basis of Art Spiegelman’s comic; “Shoah”, 2003 inspired by Claude Lanzmann’s film and paintings inspired by the prose of Tadeusz Borowski), and the various contexts of post-war life from the time of the Polish People’s Republic and most recent history depicted from a personal perspective. In the series of modernist churches from Tarnow or the portraits of priests (2006), Sasnal portrays the symbolic elements of contemporary Poland that currently dominate reality. At the exhibition will also be present
ed numerous portraits and “music paintings” emerging from his fascination with music - portraits of musicians or the recording of the traces of dance (Joey Baron, 2002, Mosh pit, 2006). The exhibition will also present Sasnal’s films “Kodachrome” (2006) and “Concorde” (2003) about the withdrawal of the cult film or the cult plane, “Love Songs” (2005) and “Europa” (2007) inspired by image, texts and music: “Spring” (2006), The Ranch (2006/2007) and “Brasil” (2005) – chance documentation of confrontation with the police.

Wilhelm Sasnal was born in 1972 in Tarnow. From 1992–1994, he studied architecture at the Cracow Techinical University, and from 1994–1999, painting at the Academy of the Fine Arts. He was a co-founder of the no longer in existence Group Ladnie (1995–2001). He is linked to the Foksal Gallery Foundation in Warsaw. He lives and works in Cracow.

The artist has taken part in individual and group exhibitions in, amongst others: Johnen Galerie, Berlin; Hauser & Wirth, Zürich; Anton Kern Gallery, New York; Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Fundació ”la Caixa”, Espai Montcada, CaixaForum, Barcelona; Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Sadie Coles HQ, London; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main; Fundacja Galerii Foksal, Warsaw; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Bunkier Sztuki, Cracow; Museu Serralves Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto; Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley; Wattis Institute of Arts, San Francisco; MARTa Herford, Herford; Galeria Raster, Warsaw; Camden Arts Centre, London; Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Münich; Johnen + Schöttle, Köln; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart; Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster; Kunsthalle Zürich, Zürich; MuHKA, Antwerp; Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art, Malmö; Kunsthalle Basel, Base
l; Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris; Galeria Foksal, Warsaw ; Galeria Awangarda BWA, Wroclaw; Galeria Potocka, Cracow; Centrum Sztuki Wspólczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw; Galeria Zderzak, Cracow; Galeria Otwarta, Cracow. In 2006, Sasnal was awarded the most important European artistic award, The Vincent Award, awarded every two years by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Curator Maria Brewinska

Exhibition Catalogue, Polish/Italian/English versions with contributions by Maria Brewinska, Andrzej Szczerski and Fabio Cavallucci
Including also an interview with the artist by curator Maria Brewinska
Publisher: Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw

For images, catalogue and further information please contact Olga Gawerska: rzecznik@zacheta.art.pl

Exhibition supported by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
Main Sponsor Efect
Sponsor Mercedes-Benz

Kjersti Sundland, Hollow Void, dual channel video, 2006

A project by Stefano Romano curated by Alessandra Pioselli

Tirana, Albania - Shopping Casa Italia
Highway Tirana - Durres km. 0

1th - 15th Febraury 2008

Rendering Video…
The development of the “low cost” technology has allowed the diffusion of the video in the world. In few years the video has become one of the most
diffused media of the journalistic production and of the art world. Internet has given a further push to this media giving the possibility to send the files all over the world and to share them immediately, thanks to the file sharing technologies, putting the video in the center of the discussion on the “democratization” of the news and the images.
In today art world, artists used the video as one of the possible media of expression realizing “low cost” works up to real cinematographic productions. What is the real value of this media in the understanding of the today society? How it’s perceived by the artists that use it?
Rendering Video… wants to open some questions looking through the video productions of different artists coming from different Countries.

Yuri Ancarani: Baal, 2007, digital film, 4,49 min.
Baal is a trip inside a pine forest. A child is walking through the trees in the dark. The rhythm and the narrative mode of the video seems refer to the police stories and the visions of the sci fiction. The silhouette of a chimney appears through the leaves, tall symbol of a modernity full of doubts and relicts of an époque that held in trust to the technology hope of ransom and progress. The light so dramatic give to the scene a symbolic and mythical dimension, transforming the chimney in an arcane and far object,
solitary ruler of a wild and dark landscape. It’s Baal: for the Phoenician the Lord, the divinity, the energy. The narrating voice is taken from a 1957 Italian documentary on the Ravenna’s petrochemical pole, the zone where the artist shot the video. It announce with exalted tones the victory of the light on the darkness.
In his video work, Yuri Ancarani explores the relationship between the artificial and natural landscape, often shooting the area where He lives, the Emilia Romagna, in a constant balance through countryside and post-industrial atmospheres.

Kjersti Sundland, Hollow Void, 2006, dual channel video installation, 4,5 min. loop.
The video came by sampling images from the tube and the zoo of Berlin. Rare figures of careless humans and animals passes through claustrophobics rooms and corridors. The noises on the background contribute to strengthen the feeling of confusion, improved by the loop that take away them thickness as though they live behind an opaque glass.
Hollow void shows a co penetration of time-space dimensions. To the cultural space overlap the animal space, but both are
ambiguous, faded. The borders are nullify in a virtual and dream dimension characterized from the dilation of time and space. In the video the space is manipulated as the time, not only sampling shooting made in two different locations, but also projecting the video in a dual channel mode transforming the image, apparently unique, in two ones scrolling in synchronous, obtain an unnatural horizontal scenic.
Kjersti Sundland use the digital technology in a sophisticated way to expand the borders of perception.

www.tica-al.org

Montehermoso Kulturunea

CARON GEARY.
Frontal view No. 4 of White British Female,
UK Born. “Feral”, London,
Self portrait, 2007.

Centro Cultural Montehermoso Kulturunea
Fray Zacarías Martínez, 2
01001 Vitoria-Gasteiz SPAIN
00(34) 945 161 830
http://www.montehermoso.net

http://www.montehermoso.net

In January 2008, the Montehermoso Kulturunea Cultural Centre is initiating a new project directed at the production, exhibition and dissemination of art and contemporary thought, coming within the key strategy of working on the triad formed by “art, culture, society”. This innovative project is a pioneer in Spain in applying the policies of gender equality to the field of culture and contemporary art, in addition to the production of projects and specific research to be integrated into the Centre’s
annual programmes.

This new scheme is to be launched this coming 25th January with the inauguration of “La Mirada Iracunda / The Furious Gaze”, a group exhibition commissioned by Maura Reilly and Xabier Arakistain.

In order to disseminate and promote an understanding of feminist art and thought, the exhibition will be accompanied by a congress / course in which a number of theorists, artists and cultural and political actors will analyse the issues outlined above.

THE FURIOUS GAZE
Exhibition
25th January - 4th May

Curated by Xabier Arakistain (Director of the Montehermoso Kulturunea Cultural Center) and Maura Reilly (Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum)

Artists: Lida Abdul, Pilar Albarracín, Alice Anderson, Txaro Arrazola, Andrea Bowers, Kathe Burkhart, Loulou Cherinet, Dorothy Cross, Lara Favaretto, Coco Fusco, Chitra Ganesh, Caron Geary, Cristina Lucas, Tracey Moffatt, Yurie Nagashima, Itziar Okariz, Mireia Sallarès, Charlotte Schleiffert, A.L. Steiner and Sophie Whettnall.

The exhibition The Furious Gaze proposes considering feminism as a source of knowledge that is vital for understanding the world we live in, and as an essential framework for going investigating visual works that deal with situations of inequality experienced by women, and women artists in particular, at the beginning of this 21st century.

This international group exhibition presents a collection of works by 20 artists, from different cultural backgrounds, who express their views on the fallacy of sexual equality and on a fury that has no possibility of being displayed. This exhibition connects with the different artistic events which were held in 2007 on both sides of the Atlantic and which explored the relationships between art and feminism, all directed at incorporating feminist avant-garde works into the history of art and at furthering those objectives that are still pending in the feminist political agenda. On this matter, although it is something that is difficult to believe at the beginning of this 21st century, these objectives still include achieving true equality between men and women.

The exhibition title refers to a question raised in 1996 by the woman philosopher Amelia Valcárcel in La Política de las mujeres – The Politics of Women. For her, the irate expression was the reaction shown by those women who, having reached the age of thirty and having interiorised “the mirage of equality”, then undergo the disagreeable experience of discovering that the equality they thought they enjoyed is actually being shattered into smithereens as it impacts against an unexpected “glass ceiling”, preventing them from climbing higher up the professional ladder; a “glass ceiling” that also covers the field of art, a barrier which women artists come up against throughout their professional careers.

In the past, sexual and gender-based social inequality was interpreted by resorting to a hypothetical “natural inferiority” of women, an interpretation which successive waves of the feminist movement, and in particular the one in the late sixties and seventies in the last century, demonstrated to be politically and theoretically invalid. From that time onwards, and in line with the large-scale incorporation of more women into fields of activity, such as art, which women had hitherto been materially and symbolically prohibited from entering, the notion of the “mirage of equality” was coined. A mirage which consists in assuming that inequality between men and women is a “thing” of the past. However, this assumption is in stark contrast to all the information available and which clearly demonstrates that this inequality still persists even today in each and every field of activity. For example, in the field of art, the persistence of this “mirage of equality” is
threatening the feminist agenda still pending and which specifically concerns it. An agenda which is often labelled as being out of fashion, putting human rights on the same level as mere questions of “fashion”.
Xabier Arakistain & Maura Reilly.

THE FURIOUS GAZE
Course
February 21st-24th

Although the first demands in favour of gender equality date from the 17th century and despite fights for women’s political and civil rights have been constant since then in western history, three centuries later, gender equality still is a matter pending.

This course focuses on discrimination against women in all fields in order to get deeper into the concrete field of Art. Thus, from Art, philosophy, and culture, the aim of this course is to get nearer the concepts tackled by female artists and curators taking part in the collective exhibition “La mirada iracunda” (the Furious Gaze). Concepts like “the illusion of equality” or “the glass ceiling” will be dealt with in the lectures, while covering different contemporary feminine art strategies.

February the 21st
Feminist philosophy and numbers
- The inequality in numbers. Izaskun Moyua.
- The Glass Ceiling. Carme Adán.
- The mirage of gender equality. Françoise Duroux.
- The furious gaze. Amelia Valcárcel.
- Pannel discussion

February the 22nd
Art and feminism (theory and critic, artistic and curatorial practices)
- Inequality in Art (Revising the Manifiesto ARCO 2005). Amelia Valcárcel, Lourdes Méndez and
Xabier Arakistain.
- Can Art History survive Feminism?
- Feminist theory and critic. Katy Deepwell
- The creative act as a feminist action. Françoise Collin.
- Pannel discussion

February the 23rd
Art and feminism (theory and critic, artistic and curatorial practices)
- Feminist curatorial practices. Uta Meta Bauer, Maura Reilly.
- Feminist artistic practices. Ulrike Rosenbach, Suzanne Lacy, Monica Bonvicini.
- Pannel discussion

February the 24th
Recent feminist publications
- Book presentation. Femmes artistas, artistas femmes, by Elisabeth Lebovici and Catherine Gonnard.
- Book presentation. Antropología Feminista, by Lourdes Méndez