18.06-30.09.2018

The spatial installation by Zuza Golińska constitutes a three-month intervention into the space of Plac Małachowskiego and the Zachęta — National Gallery of Art building. Three platforms, resulting from the architectural division of the facade, link the space of the institution with the strip of greenery previously inaccessible to visitors. The installation changes the dynamics of entering / exiting the building and the method of movement throughout the square. The titular Left, Right, Center are the indicators of the location of each of the platforms and give the possibility of choice. However, all three platforms lead to the same place.

Katarzyna Przezwańska in her artistic practice, she often refers to nature and architecture. She combines both of these fields in an effort to improve the quality of human life, constantly trying to make art useful. She is inspired by both vernacular architecture and the 20th-century classics as well as geological phenomena and vegetative processes. Przezwańska is the author of architectural interventions, installations, and paintings, where she often uses natural materials: rocks, minerals, and plants.

The installation was realised in collaboration with the University of Warsaw. In October 2018, as part of the Island project, Fountain will be found in the garden on the Ochota campus.

The title of the work refers to ancient enclosures where events would take place – the amphitheater, the stadium, and the marketplace – the first stages of politics, performance, debate, and public communication. The line marks a perimeter, a boundary line, but also demarcates a site for presentation, a closed circuit for activity, in which actions are taken. It operates as a variable frame, a temporary tool that inaugurates a system, a relation. The primary act of drawing, makes the line an instrument for mark-making, for both bringing entities together and dividing.

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The installation was created as part of the "Plac Małachowskiego 3" exhibition, as yet another interpretation of this topic. A thickly looped rope made of hemp fibres and caoutchouc previously presented in various gallery spaces, will now be replaced with a 800-meters-long silicone rope that will wrap around the Zachęta building. With this act, the artist will pose a question about the role of cultural institutions in today's world, as well as create a platform to says: let’s talk!

Katarzyna Krakowiak’s work consists of a performative drawing — a recording of an eight-hour operation on the façade of the Zachęta building. It was created as a result of gradual, methodical cleaning, washing of the walls of the gallery and revealing the architecture. The material was the dust accumulated on the façade, while water was the tool. The drawing, left exposed to dirty air during the exhibition, will gain and lose successive layers deposited and washed away by atmospheric factors.

The gesture, activity and movement itself, as well as the further life of the drawing, were important in the artist’s action, inspired by the history of Zachęta as a cultural institution and the architectural changes of the building.

The drawing is visible on the base of the façade from Królewska Street, as well as on the façade of Zachęta.

Paweł Althamer, Roman Stańczak and Adam Althamer, Kosma Althamer, Remigiusz Bąk, Andrzej Bialik, Julia Bistuła, Jaśmina Cieślik, Józef Gałązka, Waldemar Grecki, Grupa Nowolipie, Marcin Kaliński, Koji Kamoji, Magdalena Komornicka, Ita Krajewska, Natan Kryszk, Krzysztof Kurpacki, Robert Maciejuk, Jacek Markiewicz, Sophie Masłowski, Przemek Matecki, Michał Slezkin, Leon Stańczak, Jane Stoykov, Stach Szumski, Joanna Świerczyńska, Iza Tarasewicz, Mateusz Wolfram, Adrian Wyszczelski, and others

collaboration on the organisation of the plein-air: Andrzej Bialik, Dariusz Żukowski

Windfalls 2018 is space created by Paweł Althamer and Roman Stańczak in Małachowskiego Square. Althamer and Stańczak, along with invited guests, initiated a congress of sculptors — a plein-air, that is an encouragement to, through sculpture, practice positive and creative work in a shared space and space of one’s own. During the plein-air, many individual works and one sculpture were created.

Thanks to the courtesy of the City of Zurich, the space of Windfalls 2018 also includes structures designed by Piotr Brzoza and Daniel Kiss, which are part of Paweł Althamer’s OWOW project carried out in the Münsterhof square in Zurich, as a part of the project Kunst im öffentlichen Raum.

Naming it nicely is a performance for tree, objects and one dancer — both as containers of affects, desire, sadness and rage.

It deals with the possibilities, expectations and limitations around expressing unpleasant or ‘negative’ emotions. What is allowed to be shown and by whom? What happens with the body that is being used as ‘a bridge’, or ‘as a container’ of anger? This performance seems to think of ‘negative’ emotions beyond pathology, but as useful mechanisms that can open ways to different understanding of what it means to act and function in the society that tries to erase and diminish their transformational potential.