The exhibition Sculpture in Search of a Place is yet another one in a series of cross-sectional thematic exhibitions at the Zachęta, devoted each year to a different artistic medium. It tackles the subject of the identity of Polish sculpture over the last sixty years — not so much as a chronology of artistic activity, but as a presentation of the phenomena and creative attitudes that have been essential for its development.

Zachęta — National Gallery of Art owes both its seat and the mission of popularizing visual arts to the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts (SEFA) established 160 years ago by art enthusiasts and artists. This dedication to art resounds in the inscription “Artibus” (To the Arts) on the building’s façade. From the very beginning, this mission has included collecting contemporary art – then and today.

The exhibition is devoted to issues of appropriation, borrowing, processing, remixing and sampling of culture using existing objects such as artistic and press photographs, works of art created by other artists, films, literature, music, and all things created within the wider sphere of culture and beyond.

To Pee in a Bun is the fifth presentation of a selection of works from the Zachęta collections. At the exhibition can be seen works either rarely or never before seen. The exhibition’s curator Karol Radziszewski – has made a subjective selection and reinterpretation of works, placing them in new and at times surprising contexts.       

The year 1968 is a time of the culmination of a great number of wildly different political and social tensions. Protests, unrest and demonstrations took place all over the world, from Mexico and the U.S.A., through Germany, France, Poland and Czechoslovakia to as far as Japan (without neglecting Latin America). The exhibition Revolutions 1968 does not present the art of those times. It is rather an attempt to portray this period through art (although not just through art) from different perspectives: historical and documentary, or through interpretations and re-interpretations of social problems and cultural phenomena characteristic of this turbulent time.