Author: Zbigniew Libera, Sylwia Breczko
Publisher: Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski
Published: 2020
ISBN: 978-83-65240-62-0
Cover: softback
Pages: 304
Language: Polish / English

An artist’s selection of press texts, a work of journalism and criticism, documentation of the artist’s activities and the transformations of Polish art institutions. The press study of Zbigniew Libera’s thirty years of practice is a publication that collects press clippings from Poland and abroad. It sheds light on Libera’s profile as well as the art world seen against the background of social changes in transformation-era Poland

The second volume covers the years 1998–2002, a period marked by controversy in both artistic and political life. An important theme of the publication is the reception of Libera’ exhibitions that shocked the Polish and global art scene – Irreligionin in Brussels, Mirroring Evil in New York, and the The Nazis at the Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw. At the time, a discussion about critical art, understood in terms of provocation and blasphemy, swept through the press. Why did art exhibited at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art or Zachęta arouse so much emotion? Why has controversy become the main category for describing contemporary art? How did the reception of Libera’s Lego Concentration Camp change over time and what language did it evoke? Did we really witness a cold war between art and society? These are just some of the questions posed by the collected material.