Colour and graffiti, forgery and fire

The exhibition of Polish art in Brussels this summer explodes all the clichés of Poland as a grey and bleak country. The show at Bozar opens with a burst of intense, bright colour, with Jozef Mehoffer’s 1903 masterpiece “Strange Garden” hanging next to spectacular canvases by contemporary artist Jakub Julian Ziolkowski. It is a bold and brilliant start that draws you in, opens your mind and reminds you why the show is entitled The Power of Fantasy.

At first glance, the Mehoffer painting seems a typical country garden scene. But as you look more closely you see a largerthan- life dragonfly at the top of the painting. This surreal attribute distorts the perspective and introduces a fantastical element.

Ziolkowski explores the subconscious and the imaginary in extremely precise and detailed canvases full of bizarre and, at times, disturbing figures, plants and insects. Take for example his work “The Great Battle under the Table”, which depicts a pretend battlefield in the artist’s own apartment. As well as having hundreds of tiny soldier figures marching in formation under a table, the picture is full of details such as a tiny self-portrait of Ziolkowski at an easel. At one level, the work appears playful. Yet one cannot look at a Polish artist’s depiction of a battlefield without thinking of how Poland has been a battleground in history. This dialogue between past and present runs throughout the exhibition, re-contextualising Polish art and highlighting how key 20th-century themes have continued to be explored in new ways in post-1989 artworks. The exhibition, which coincides with Poland holding the EU presidency, is the largest of its kind since the collapse of communism in 1989.

Photography also has a place. Photographs of the artist, dramatist and philosopher Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, who took his own life in September 1939 upon learning of the Red Army’s advance on Poland, are juxtaposed with work by contemporary photographer Zofia Kulik. On one wall are portraits of Witkiewicz dressed up as Napoleon and performing for the camera; opposite are beautiful black and white photo collages by Kulik where she has woven together hundreds of small photographs into larger images.

Not every room has a confrontation between a modern and a contemporary artist; some are dedicated to a single artist. As co-curator David Crowley said as he showed me around, “In every space, we’ve tried to create intense, focused experiences.” One such experience is Robert Kusmirowski’s “D.O.M.”, the recreation of a graveyard in the Polish town of Konskowola. To quote Crowley, Kusmirowski is “a master forger.” As a student, for example, the artist designed stamps, put them on letters and tried to get them through the Polish postal service. In D.O.M., we have a work whose title is a play on words: D.O.M. is an acronym for Deo Optimo Maximo (The Greatest and Best God), a familiar inscription on church doorways, while dom is also the Polish word for house or home. “In this way,” says Crowley, “the installation offers a melancholic view of the homeland.” The mystery of the work is wonderfully accentuated by the lighting, which allows the gravestones at the front to be clearly visible while you can’t quite make out the details of what lies at the back.

Painting, photography and installations are all genres you would expect to find in an exhibition of modern and contemporary art. But how about a piece by a graffiti artist? Mariusz Waras, born in 1978, is a street artist and graphic designer who has created hundreds of mural paintings around the world and become an internet sensation. “He’s a celebrity,” Crowley tells me as we stand in front of the Waras work commissioned for the exhibition. “People are coming just for this.” Using black spray-paint through a stencil onto the white Bozar wall, Waras has created a work that looks futuristic and yet whose intricate motifs are actually chimneys and symbols of 19th-century technology. “The past ripples into the present,” Crowley says.

The Waras work isn’t the only one where Bozar showed its willingness to take a risk. For Olaf Brzeski’s “Dream – Spontaneous Combustion” (pictured), the image used for the publicity materials and the catalogue, the gallery had to allow a fire in order to create black smoke on the white wall.

Many of the artists in the exhibition cross the boundary between the old and new Poland, having spent their childhoods and youth in the authoritarian People’s Republic of Poland and their adult and working lives in a democratic Poland. In several of the contemporary artists’ works, symbols of communist Poland are used or subverted, raising questions about the past and present. Julita Wojcik’s “Wavy Block” crochets a communist-style housing block out of pink and cream threads, reappraising the buildings in a witty way. Maciej Kurak’s “Fifty fifty” is an installation of a sewing machine hooked up to a Fiat 126p, essentially the only car found in communist Poland and for which there was a waiting list of many years. “It displays a lightness and humour characteristic of this generation,” Crowley said of the work.

The show features major works by internationally renowned contemporary artists including Monika Sosnowska, whose spatial installations are often inspired by post-war modernisation or post-industrial ruins; Wilhelm Sasnal, whose painting dedicated to Copernicus questions the power of science by redefining a famous Warsaw statue of the Polish astronomer; and the prestidigitator of contemporary art Pawel Althamer, whose piece “Brodno People”, comprising life-size figures made of salvaged material sprayed silver, is on display.

The exhibition is a must-see not only for the contemporary art, but also for the iconic 20th-century masterpieces such as Mehoffer’s “Strange Garden”, Jacek Malczewski’s “Vicious Circle” and one painting of the “Execution” series by Andrzej Wroblewski, an artist who died in 1957 just short of his 30th birthday. “This artist is being rediscovered,” Crowley said of Wroblewski. “Bozar is catching a wave.”

Most important though is the dialogue between the two eras, the way in which Polish art is put in a new context. As Crowley says as we leave the exhibition, “We want to break the negative image, the negative stereotypes, and embrace Poland’s sense of optimism and its place in the world today.”

The Power of Fantasy

Until 18 September
Bozar
Ravensteinstraat 23, Brussels
www.bozar.be

Focus on Polish culture

As well as its art, Poland will also be showcasing its music, films,
theatre and literature during the six-month EU presidency that began
earlier this month. Most events are in Brussels, but also Antwerp,
Ghent and Leuven get a look-in.

One of the latest confirmations is that Polish film-maker Roman
Polanski will make an appearance in Brussels in the autumn to
coincide with an exhibition illustrating his career through photographs,
archive footage and film posters.

On the classical musical front, one composer who will be in the
spotlight is Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937), whose musical
influences were from his homeland as well as from Debussy, Ravel
and Stravinksy. Music by Krzysztof Penderecki, described as Poland’s
greatest living composer, will also be performed, and in one concert
Penderecki will conduct his own violin concerto no. 2 with the Sinfonia
Varsovia orchestra.

Other projects include the I, Culture Orchestra, bringing together
young musicians from Poland and countries to the east of the EU,
such as Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine in order to emphasize how
both the East and the West influence Europe’s cultural identity.

On July 21 creative sewing workshops will take place in 12 capital
cities around the world, including Brussels. They will be open to
everyone with or without sewing experience. “There’s nothing more
individual,” said Olga Wysocka of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, which
is coordinating the presidency’s international cultural programme.
“And yet at the same time, there’s nothing more collective.”

Another highlight is the recognition of the late Czeslaw Milosz, winner
of the Nobel Prize for Literature, whose birth was 100 years ago this
year. Milosz will be celebrated with the publication of an audio book
of his poetry recorded in several languages.

www.culturepolonaise.eu