The backbone of the exhibition Wild at Heart is the collection of the ING Polish Art Foundation which gathers the works by Polish living artists created post 1990. The precision of the spatial and temporal framework of this collection determines its content which focuses on the Polish scene during the social and economic transformation (following the fall of communism in 1989).

An exhibition devoted to the interwar period in Poland, with a narrative built around the key social ideas that were born after the country regained its independence in 1918. The modernizing ideas, focusing around the needs of previously underprivileged social groups — women, children, workers and ethnic minorities — will be shown through the perspective of the broadly understood visual culture of this time (from architecture and design to the most modern medium of the time, film).

In the past decades, there have been some minor attempts to display contemporary V4 fine arts. However, the comprehensive approach that we are undertaking now is unprecedented. This exhibition is to demonstrate that V4 cooperation is limited not only to politics and the economy, but it is bound to underline the cultural values of the spirit of Visegrcid in the 21st century and display a segment of contemporary fine arts in the Headquarters of the European Union.

The exhibition at Zachęta is the first institutional survey of Anna Ostoya’s work.  Her works are shown here in a new configuration: pieces which previously formed closed meaning arrangements were taken out of them in order to be put in different contexts. The exhibition features earlier paintings and collages, as well as the latest works that all touch upon the problems of art, politics and personal experience.

An exhibition of one of the most important classics of the 20th and 21st century art. Born Sarkis Zabunyan, in 1938 in Istanbul, Sarkis is an Armenian conceptual artist. He studied painting and design at the Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul, and since the 1960s has lived and worked in Paris. He was one of a dozen young artists invited by the curator and art critic Harald Szeemann to participate in the exhibition Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (Works — Concepts — Processes — Situations — Information), at the Kunsthalle Bern (1969), which presented a new vision of contemporary art.

Andrej Polukord carries out his artistic activities mainly in the countryside, although he sometimes performs actions in which architecture and urban infrastructure are used. The artist was born and brought up in Vilnius, then he studied in Vienna and nowadays lives partly in Vienna and partly in Vilnius.

Maria Anto’s exhibition at the Zachęta will be the first such extensive review of the artist’s paintings since her death in 2007. Focusing on her works in the 1960s and 1970s, it features about 60 paintings (individual and collective portraits, animal presentations, allegorical scenes and landscapes), as well as drawings and selected archival materials.

This exhibition at the Zachęta reminisces about one of the most important and colourful figures of the Polish artistic scene after The Second World War – the painter, sculptor, designer, scenographer (creator of both theatre sets and exhibition arrangements), co-organizer of such events as the Plein-airs in Osieki (since 1963) and the Biennale of Spatial Forms in Elblag (1965), Marian Bogusz.

The exhibition consists of three video installations. The first one is a three channel projection realised at the site of the archaeological excavations at Karahan Tepe, Turkey, where the oldest site of worship — dating back to 10 thousand years BC and believed to be a cradle of civilisation — was discovered.
It was even before the neolithic revolution, before the beginning of agriculture and animal breeding, that the oval structures made of adhering megalithic pillars had been created there. What civilisation managed to accomplish this, who were the people who buried the sanctuary 1500 years later and why — remains a mystery.

Views 2017 is the eighth edition of the competition for young artists, organised by Deutsche Bank Polska S.A. and Zachęta – National Gallery of Art. Participating in this year’s Views are artists born between 1984 and 1987, representing various regions of Poland, whose art is linked by a shared interest in humanity — both in the individual, as well as in the social perspective.

Every gallery wants to have the reputation of being the best. The artists from Azorro Group tackled this idea in a humorous way, in Berlin, while looking for the Best Gallery, where they could show their works. And perhaps they found it: this year, their film became part of Zachęta’s collection.

Zachęta — National Gallery of Art presents the first retrospective in Poland of one of the most original painters of the twentieth century, Maria Lassnig (1919–2014, Austria). Featuring large scale paintings that reveal her long standing exploration of the body and self-representation the exhibition spans her entire career.

Better Self  is a reflection on the contemporary culture of individualism, its causes, effects, and side effects. Featuring actions, performance pieces, training sessions, and public workshops, the Zachęta space will become a stage, a gym, a yoga room, a therapy room, and a discussion site.

Tomasz Saciłowski’s exhibition at the Zachęta Project Room, titled CLFN, consists of new works combining photography and painting. According to the author himself, ‘the prints have been made from negatives and slides with images of leaves, flowers, and trees, taken in the second half of 2016’. He continues, ‘I exposed the films multiple times, including with RGB lamps in the darkroom.

You’re a Cute One, Sweetie is a very personal film, resulting from the artist’s experience related to the tragic death of her mother Małgorzata. Aleksandra Kubiak combines video-performance with documentary film: a recording of the meetings with the actress who is about to play the role of her mother, and her ‘being’ Małgorzata for one day.

For several years, the Summer Terrace of the Zachęta Project Room has become a space for artistic installations open to the public, local residents, and passers-by. In 2015, such installations were created by Jaśmina Wójcik, together with Jacek Gądek, while in 2016 it was Michał Mioduszewski. This year’s arrangement was designed as a resting place for the public, a space for concerts and meetings on the gallery’s terrace.

In the space of Zachęta’s Mały Salon we will present a selection of the original "Little Reviews" (from the collection of the National Library), whose English translations will consecutively appear at the Polish Pavilion in Venice.

Sharon Lockhart (b. 1964) is an American artist living and working in Los Angeles and Poland. Lockhart works with communities to make films and photographs that are both visually compelling and socially engaged through collaborations that unfold over long periods of time. Created with young women from the Youth Sociotherapy Center in Rudzienko, Poland, her project Little Review comprises translations, a new film and series of photographs, as well as educational workshops.

The exhibition takes its point of departure in the popular humanistic category of affects, which organise its emotional space. Affect is construed here as the body’s automatic reaction to external stimuli or internal processes. These reactions, pleasant or not, occur beyond consciousness and the rational mind, and are not immediately subject to cognitive reflection.

Jarosław Kozakiewicz is an artist who works at the intersection of sculpture, science and architecture. In practice for almost three decades, his work has a remarkably constant focus on the human body.

In the exhibition Where Do Thoughts Come From? at the Zachęta Project Room, artist Zofia Gramz presents the summary of a year-long artistic/research project where she made drawings and subjected herself to self-analysis, seeking to identify the motifs that had inspired the specific works.

The title of the exhibition I Use My Camera as a Weapon is a quotation from Parks’ first and most important published writing, A Choice of Weapons. That title is the key to his life philosophy and it has to do with choosing your tools precisely in order to reach your goals.  It also refers to a form of activism and the struggle for social equality.

Thursday 9 March 2017 at 7 p.m.

Works presented in the exhibition re-use artifacts from recent history (architecture, photography, media images documenting political and social events, film, music). Some authors treat them as a stage on which they develop completely new ideas, the others refer more to the stories, that inspired them.

Exhibition Life. A Manual — integrating various disciplines — presents the works by authors who think in classifications, enjoy formal constraints and complex narratives. The exposition is divided into four parts: ludic, sociological, novelist and autobiographical. The reading room, which is an integral part of the show, permeates all the ‘chapters’ of the exhibition.

Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz. Notes from the Expanse is a monographic exhibition presenting the artist’s sculptural works, a large selection of medals and graphics, and a part of his oeuvre virtually unknown to the Polish audience: a collection of polychromed metal sculptures created on a residency in Canada. But the show’s purpose is not only to present the achievements of an outstanding sculptor, but also to highlight the versatility and magnitude of his talent.

The Returning from Białowieża exhibition at the Zachęta Project Room will present the context of the Białowieża, open-air Returning to Białowieża project. It will also be an opportunity to meet the project’s key figures, including Joanna Kossak, Tomasz Samojlik, Paweł Winiarski, and Lech Wilczek.

The inspiration for the exhibition was the work of Abraham Ostrzega — Jewish sculptor and culture animator active in pre-war Warsaw. He was a student of Henryk Kuna, and was recognised for his sepulchral sculptures — tombstones, several dozen of which can be found at the Jewish Cemetery in the Wola District in Warsaw.

The curators behind the exhibition Fair Building believe that construction sites represent the frontline in architecture; it is the physical manifestation of any live project and despite technological advancements is still led largely by manual labour. The contribution from these workers is missing from architectural discourse and construction processes remain unpredictable.

This year’s show is dedicated mainly to our sponsors: those who supported our collection through crowdfunding or in other ways. This years’ acquisitions are presented in the context of other classical works from our collection — a group of  Edward Dwurnik’s works and of the Egit Foundation’s deposit, which has been in our charge for many years.

he international exhibition entitled It Happened Tomorrow is a result of the collaboration between the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade and the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw. This collaboration includes the realisation of two exhibitions, the first one at the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art curated by Una Popovic

This exhibition presents artists of the middle and younger generation from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. The invited artists live and work in their countries of origin, as well as in Europe or North America, but most often they permanently move between these two worlds (sometimes they are called modern urban nomads). Often educated overseas, they receive scholarships or are in touch with the world through global media.

The exhibition revolves around one of the most interesting phenomenons in 20th-century Polish design: so called Łysa Góra experiment (1959–1968). In 1949–1992, the Kamionka Cooperative of Folk and Artistic Industry operated in Łysa Góra, a village located between Tarnów and Kraków.

One of the assumptions of Culture and Neuroscience conference is to present the works of a neurologically disabled person. The first edition, in 2014, was devoted to aphasis and quite naturally its featuredartist became the originator and curator of the project — Karolina Wiktor. This year the main theme is multiple sclerosis, therefore Karolina invited Iveta Pilařová — a Czech artist struggeling with this disease since her 18th birthday.

The Artists is a one-day festival devoted to music and sound projects created by visual artists. The artists invited to participate in this year edition were chosen in an open international competition, an open-call. By doing this we wanted to include in the programme numerous projects sent to us from the first edition, and to open the festival up to the younger generation of artists.

How was folklore and folk art perceived directly after the war and in the first decades of the Peoples Republic of Poland? How did the ‘people’s’ government make use of it? How did its status change, the moment it was introduced into museums and galleries? What was the status of the folk artist — perceived as ‘the other’?

We all come from the ocean, perhaps that is the reason why for centuries water has been ever-present in many rituals from various cultures. It is believed to have the power to purify, add strength and bring salvation. Project 12 per minute is a tribute of sorts to water as our  primordial home. 

The exhibition Bi-polar is the first such extensive presentation of the work of Jacek Malinowski in Zachęta. It presents a selection of the filmography of an artist who from 2000 has been realizing films in the style of fake documentaries. Over the course of over a decade Malinowski has developed his own, characteristic pseudo-documentary style that is an important element in his artistic “signature”.

Differences in works of art in the before and after stages may be visible, but often they are not noticeable to the viewer. The status BETWEEN, normally not revealed to the audience, includes complicated processes and activities, as well as important decisions regarding restoration.

The exhibition comprises many parallel stories and anecdotes: from historical references and recontextualisations of stereotypes and symbols, through analyses of the Polish fantasies and notions of wealth, to a critique of the market and personal narratives. Transformation-era clichés or experiences of the 2007 economic crisis mingle here with the manifestation of the joy of possession, fascination with luxury or the beauty of expensive items, as well as reflections on the real and symbolic value of works of art (which have invariably been considered as luxury goods).

The exhibition I like you, I like you a lot et.al. is the artist’s first solo show in Warsaw. The photographer, born in Kowary, has been living and working in London for many years. In her work one will find both her Polish and cosmopolitan experiences (some series of photographs were taken in Albania, Canada, Germany, Palestine, India). At the exhibition in the Zachęta Project Room Dobrucka shows two series of photos. The first one — I like you, I like you a lot — is a very personal project, started in 2008. It was conceived as a reflection of a family tragedy — the loss of a thirteen year old brother Maks, who drowned during a scouting trip.

COMMON AFFAIRS is an exhibition of Polish artists selected from amongst those who have been finalists in the VIEWS competition. This award for the best young artists, initiated in 2003 by two institutions: Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, whose mission is the popularization of contemporary art, and Deutsche Bank – which for many years has declared the promotion of art and an interest in contemporaneity amongst its activities – is the most important distinction awarded in the field of the visual arts in Poland.

Assembled, Disassembled is the title of an exhibition that presents a selection of works referencing actual or possible scenarios in the liberalisation of production, distribution, economics, art and science.

The exhibition by Rafał Bujnowski is different from his projects to date. It features most recent works only, and highly varied ones, including a video about a man met at a fitness club, a series of paintings from recent months, and two objects — vintage cars — borrowed from the material world of things.

The Polish Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2016 directly responds to this year’s theme – Reporting from the Front – by addressing the ethical issues facing one of the most underrepresented participants in architecture: the construction worker.

The project prepared for Tabakalera is a post-painterly installation that grows into the entire space of the Project Room. The starting point was to address the issue of how to handle empty space (treated as a meaningful element) and collate it with the artist’s practice. He creates a total painting installation using different sizes of cardboard boxes – understood as the simplest, most everyday units for containing empty space.

The exhibition looks at travel in a region where freedom to travel was, until recently, a luxury available only to the very few. The revolution of 1989 and the subsequent opening to the world and globalisation processes allowed citizens of the former Eastern Bloc personal mobility on an unprecedented scale. Participation in international exchanges contributed to the region’s identity today as much as the new political and economic order.

A key figure on the Polish artistic scene from the moment of her debut in the first half of the 1970s. Teresa Murak, a performer and sculptor engaging in activities in public space, is a precursor and one of the most important representatives of earth art in Poland.

Habima Fuchs defines her exhibitions as an open field throughout which the viewer can take an infinite number of trips. The same is true for the show at the Zachęta Project Room. The gallery space is like a sheet of paper on which the author’s hand draws/arranges various visual or spatial elements.

This is a painting project, in which finished paintings will be the starting point for creating works of art with the participation of visitors to the Project Room. During the week’s painting action, elements of the paintings will go outside their frames and take over the gallery’s space. Visitors will become creators, and in addition to reproducing the forms found on canvas, they’ll also be able to create their own compositions.

For almost ten years now Polish illustration has been enjoying a boom period. We can see this especially in the market for children’s books. A great number of talented artists, and also their diversity and ingenuity, supported by open-minded publishers have meant that we have ever more outstanding books to choose from.

Magdalena Więcek’s exhibition is another monographic presentation of works by a Polish 20th century sculptor at the Zachęta. Exhibitions by artists such as Alina Szapocznikow, Alina Ślesińska or Barbara Zbrożyna show the importance of their explorations and the universality of their endeavours, but also the process of building the creative independence of women, something that Magdalena Więcek’s art (1924–2008) also fits into.

Wojciech Zamecznik (1923–1967) — one of the most important representatives of the Polish Poster School is a multi-dimensional but still little known figure. Currently in the process of being rediscovered as a photographer, he was active through the two decades following the Second World War as an artist in a wide number of fields.

168 years after its premiere, in Vilnius, the Polish opera Halka returns to the city—albeit in a very particular form.

Converter is a painting-cum-musical project of two young artists. The exhibition does not try to settle the question of the primacy of painting or music. It is rather a free dialogue of two artists representing various fields of art, an attempt to establish communication between them. Agata Kus’s and Michał Dymny’s artistic attitudes are linked by an intuitive approach to the creative process which admits an element of improvisation.

Project URSUS<> TABAKALERA by Jaśmina Wójcik comments on the idea of twin towns and cultural exchange built on it. It attempts to present histories of people and places, to create the actual relations between people from two countries with different history, that in some aspects might find similarities and mutual inspirations.

Works Nearing Completion is a project by Łukasz Sosiński, a multimedia artist whose practice often incorporates elements of architecture.

Art in Our Age is an exhibition of works from the collections of the ING Polish Art Foundation and Zachęta — National Gallery of Art. The exhibition confronts the activities of contemporary artists with the fundamental questions that those visiting their exhibitions ask themselves: has today’s art totally divorced itself from reality? Who are contemporary artists and why do we call the effects of their activities works of art? What does the abstract explorations of the artistic avant-garde have in common with the lives of ordinary people?

The first presentation of Marek Sobczyk’s “museum” in quotation marks took place in Zachęta’s Mały Salon in February 2006. This was a time when the landscape after the “cold war of art with society” (to quote Zbigniew Libera) was beginning slowly to be formed anew. New institutions were emerging. Not just those that were intended to have an influence on the art market, but also those stimulated by official cultural politics.

The Pyramiden and Other Stories exhibition in Warsaw gives one the opportunity to confront Epnere’s newest project with a selection of her earlier works. It seems that the point of departure for all of them is the artist’s intention to reveal the spiritual aspect of art.

We describe war from the vantage of a generation that hasn’t experienced it directly, yet fears it.

The exhibition is the first monographic presentation of the work of Jan Dziaczkowski, demonstrating the full extent of its artistic scope. Dziaczkowski is known to a wider public first and foremost as the author of collages presented at numerous exhibitions in Poland and overseas. Less well known are the remaining areas of his work that encompass painting, drawings and photography, part of which have never yet been exhibited.

Is the key period in modern Polish history of 1944–1949 equally important in the field of art? How were the first years of the new, dynamically changing socio-political reality and atmosphere, on the one hand the “euphoria of rebuilding” and on the other the “Great Fear” interpreted by artists? The exhibition is an attempt to answer the question as to how the complicated social moods and political tensions in post-war Poland found their expression in the visual arts, photographs, film and also architecture and design.

A presentation at the Zachęta workshop room recapitulates project Musical Images in which students of one of Warsaw’s secondary schools participated throughout the school year as part of an individually. The meetings at Zachęta provided an opportunity to become familiar with new instrumental techniques, contemporary composers and musical literaturę in confrontation with art history and contemporary art works.

For the seventh time Deutsche Bank Polska, and Zachęta – National Gallery of Art are happy to announce the “Views 2015 – Deutsche Bank Award” competition exhibition presenting the most interesting young, but already established, Polish artists.

The Weeds is a project about plants that form a unique record of political and social history. They can be encountered in places where Poland’s most densely populated villages once used to be. Now several dozen years after these people deserted the area, the plants have become an evergreen and ineradicable mark of human presence.

The genesis of the “Gardens” exhibition lies in the educational activities of the Zachęta, which opens art to people whose contact with it may be restricted, either for social reasons or those of, for example, eyesight or hearing. It was born on an impulse, thinking about how art can influence the viewer. This exhibition has been put together for all art lovers willing to abandon traditional ways of seeing. Come inside, close your eyes and open your ears...

This summer group exhibition in the Zachęta Project Room presents a multifarious exploration of the concept of the exotic. It is realised both for summertime tourists and for Warsaw inhabitants, who - like the noble Des Esseintes in Joris-Karl Husyman's book Against Nature – prefer to visit the exotic corners of the world mentally, without leaving their own armchair/city.

The workshop is a kind of continuation of Jaśmina Wojcik’s previous project, presented at the Zachęta Project Room in 2012 with the title Hiding People among People Without Contact with Nature Leads to Perversions.

The exhibition presents works of art, films, documentary photographs, objets d’art, and recordings – nearly 500 works of visual arts, architecture, urbanism, theatre, film, design, and everyday life of Wrocław since the 1960s until the present.

John Lurie returns to Warsaw as a painter! This presentation of contemporary works by John Lurie constitutes an attempt to reconsider this ’90s icon, to confront this image and show the artist in a new light.

The successive versions of Stano Filko's name FILKO – FYLKO – PHYLKO (and later VIRTUAL FILKO)  told of the different stages of his life, the caesuras between which were marked by dates that were important from both political and  personal points of view.

The Polish Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale will have the pleasure of presenting a panoramic film projection of the opera Halka by Stanisław Moniuszko, as it was staged in February for the inhabitants of Cazale, a village situated in the mountains of Haiti.

In her artistic credo Natalia Bażowska declares her fascination for life in all its forms, for both its psychological aspects and the physiology of the body, and for drawing inspiration also from the world around her. The exhibition that she has prepared for the Zachęta Project Room confirms these theses.

Tamy Ben-Tor and Miki Carmi’s exhibition is an attempt to mash together two strong artistic personalities that seemingly do not have much in common. It’s a kind of experiment – a challenge posed by the artists for themselves – or a test: can this real-life couple also work as an artistic duo?

The latest presentation of the collection in the Raczyński tenement building on Małachowski Square, just opposite Zachęta is entitled TRUTH BEAUTY GOODNESS.

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.

Good Times, Bad Times is the title of the first solo exhibition of the artist in Poland. Anna Jermolaewa is considered one of Austria’s most outstanding contemporary artists.

“Waiting for Better Times” is a group exhibition presenting photographs, videos, drawings, and objects by young- and mid-generation Moldovan artists, as well as two projects created in Moldova by Polish artists.

At the exhibition viewers will be able to get to know a small selection of Przemysław Matecki's painted oeuvre. Nonetheless, the works on paper and the structure of the exhibition itself will bring the viewer closer not only to his instrumentarium, but also to the intensive and uncompromising nature of his works.

The exhibition presented in Zachęta was inspired by the work of Krystiana Robb-Narbutt, a painter, drawer, and author of installations and ephemeral objects who died in 2006, and the title of her never realized idea for an exhibition, The Adoration of Sweetness.

Justyna Wencel has called her exhibition at the Zachęta Project Room Earth, Earth. This is also the title of her most recent work, a three-channel video installation. Screened on the gallery’s underground level, in a space conducive to attentive reception, the film was made in 2014 and documents an artistic action begun a year earlier.

The exhibition presented in Zachęta, “Progress and Hygiene”, is devoted to the pitfalls of modernization in the context of the idealistic faith in progress and the possibilities of “betterment” common to both art and science at the beginning of the 20th century. It was conceived as an essay which critically analyses such phenomena as genetic engineering, eugenics or research into the purity of races, also drawing attention to their continued impact on today’s world.

Gregor Schneider, one of the most highly regarded contemporary German artists who was awarded the Golden Lion at the Art Biennial in Venice in 2001, is realizing his latest project called Unsubscribe in Zachęta. In this work, Schneider again deals with the question of house, in both material and symbolic terms.

LESSON refers to a traditionally understood formal interaction between teacher and student. Yet it can also acquire additional meanings, such as drawing conclusions from particular situations or as participation in didactic process.

Previously shown in the Polish Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition in Venice, the sound sculpture Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More is based primarily on the manipulation of the tolling of a bell – an ancient instrument which has for centuries set the rhythm of our earthly and ‘eternal’ lives.

Flo Kasearu, one of the most talented Estonian artists of the young generation, decided to send a selection of her recent works on the road. On September 21 this year, a small truck departed from the artist’s House Museum in Tallinn. Its destination was the Zachęta Project Room (MPZ) where the selection was turned into an exhibition. Thus the Warsaw gallery became a twin institution of the Tallinn venue, with the ‘mother museum’ expanding the area and scope of its activity for two months.

The exhibition in Zachęta is the first such extensive presentation of the work of Zbigniew Warpechowski – a precursor of performance art in Poland and one of the first in the world to work in this genre – presenting documentation of several dozen of the actions realized by the artist over the course of the last 50 years.

Corpus is a group exhibition comprised of works relating to the body and corporality, inspired by the booksCorpus and Corpus II. Writings on Sexuality by Jean-Luc Nancy — one of the most important contemporary French philosophers.

Becoming... is an installation consisting of hundreds of pompons — a set of inconspicuous coloured dots installed in space in a spontaneous, but well thought through configuration. The flexibility, mobility and modularity of the wired ‘fluffy atoms’ — which viewers can touch and set in motion — constitutes a spectacular performative aspect, liberating the composition from abstraction’s pomposity or conventionality.

Real-Time Controller – exhibition prepared by Marta Węglińska, Maciej Nowacki and Martha Hryniuk – its first show had in the Silverado Gallery at the Poznań Academy of Fine Arts. In Zachęta Project Room curators will show a different version of the project, raising questions about the nature and opportunities to reproduce the principles of the original.

Zachęta – National Gallery of Art presents the first individual exhibition in Poland of the work of Victor Man – the Romanian painter, recently named Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year 2014.