Zachęta – National Gallery of Art

artists: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Krzysztof M. Bednarski, Olaf Brzeski, Jan Dobkowski, Tadeusz Dominik, Edward Dwurnik, Piotr Janas, Jerzy Kałucki, Marcin Maciejowski, Przemysław Matecki, Jerzy Nowosielski, Lech Okołów, Włodzimierz Pawlak, Józef Petruk, Henryk Stażewski, Jerzy Tchórzewski, Karol Wierusz-Kowalski, Ryszard Winiarski, Krzysztof Żwirblis Basia Bańda, Sławomir Pawszak, Katarzyna Przezwańska, Jakub Woynarowski
authors: Rafał Dominik, Szymon Żydek
collaboration on the part of Zachęta: Maria Świerżewska-Franczak

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 exhibition is conceived to mark the jubilee of 15 years of the existence of the ING Polish Art Foundation — one of the first corporate foundations in Poland that consciously supported and promoted the activities of Polish artists. The collection created by it includes works made after 1990 and from the very start has been formed in close collaboration with Zachęta — National Gallery of Art. The ties that bind the two institutions have many levels: Zachęta supports the Foundation with its knowledge and experience, the Foundation supports the development of the Zachęta collection, while in the case of the dissolution of the Foundation the collection of Polish art created by it, is to become part of the collections of the National Gallery of Art. And it is precisely this close institutional relation that was the starting point for this exhibition.

At the invitation of the Foundation, the curatorial-artistic duo Rafał Dominik and Szymon Żydek prepared an exhibition which serves to make more accessible and translate the complexities involved in the reception and use of contemporary art in everyday life. The works gathered in the collections of both institutions have been treated not as autonomous works, but as elements of a greater whole — immersed in a social, aesthetic and historical reality. It is for this reason that at the exhibition the works selected from the collections are presented in constellation with works of pop music, stories from local newspapers, internet memes, models or graphs of financial markets. All this is to make clearer and to facilitate for visitors to the exhibition an understanding of the context and ideas of artists, and the road they travelled prior to the emergence of a work of art. Amongst the themes tackled by artists at the exhibition are those such as, the development of artistic media, the mechanisms in the frames of which new technological developments take on functions of artistic techniques, and the relations between contemporary art and other forms of human activities. As a result, the exhibition has taken on the form of an installation within the Zachęta rooms which, through the help of various media and technologies, presents contemporary art as an easily accessible source of inspiration, blurring the boundaries dividing the work of artists from capacities useful in everyday life.