Don't Miss New Exhibitions at the Galerienhaus, Lindenstr 34-35

Opened on 11/21/2009:

Galerija Gregor Podnar

Goran Petercol, 15 Views of Glass on view until 09/01/10

http://www.gregorpodnar.com/index.html

ZAK BRANICKA

Szymon Kobylarz, Civil Defense on view until 30/01/10

http://www.zak-branicka.com/

The KNOT: coming soon to Berlin, Bucharest and Warsaw

The Knot is a temporary, mobile structure which is travelling to Berlin, Warsaw and Bucharest in the year of 2010, where it will constitute a micro-model for what could be a better city of the present.

Designed by architectural office raumlabor Berlin and with a programme conceived by Temporary Curators Collective (Markus Bader, Oliver Baurhenn, Jakub Szreder, Raluca Voinea), The Knot is a place for presence, interaction and collaboration, as well as a crucible of ideas that could engender a common dream.

It is part of the wider project The Promised City, initiated by Goethe-Institut Warsaw and Polnisches Institut Berlin.

More updates to come about the project in 2010

Kasia Fudakowski, lately

Kasia Fudakowski is a participating panelist at Ekspektatywa - an Interdisciplinary Cycle

Organized by the New Culture Foundation Bec Zmiana, Ekspektatywa refers to a state of waiting with expectations laded with hope, directly related to the developing future. "Intentionally referring to unrealized projects and ideas based on trusting in technological development, the goal of the project was to share experiences dealing with technological development and to activate dialogue between art and science."

A series of six events are taking place for which an artist and a scientist are both invited to speak. Each event as well results in a publication.

Kasia Fudakowski, along with David Alvarez Castillo, will be speaking today at 17h

Take a look at the website for more information about the event:

http://www.ekspektatywa.pl

Also, preview images of Kasia Fudakowski most recent works:

ZAK BRANICKA on Art Paper Invitations

Zak Branicka's upcoming exhibition,
Szymon Kobylarz's Civil Defense opens
Friday, November 20th 6-9pm

See link on Art Paper Invitations

Paranoid protuberances of science are Szymon Kobylarz’s source of inspiration. He is interested in quasi-scientific absurdities and the border on which rationality and obsession fester.

This theme was already present in his thesis exhibition for which he composed the fictional interior of a Euthanasia proffering institution. The rooms, cloned at a smaller scale, fuse the lack of ambiguity of a reception area with the strangeness of a planned suicide.

Science and obsession also meet in the work, Mr. Jan Kolano’s Cell (Cela Pan Jana Kolano, 2008). Kobylarz reconstructed the story of a murderer and a genius based on various media sources. Jan Kolano spent 20 years in prison where he worked without any instruments to make discoveries that were awarded recognition by scientists.

In his newest work, realized for Gallery ZAK BRANICKA, Kobylarz utilizes experiences from his school days. At that time and in light of the Cold War, all the Warsaw Agreement member states established “Civil Defense” courses. The subject matter of these lessons regarded defense mechanisms pertaining to various threats and the requisite behavior in the case of catastrophe. The children learned First Aid measures. They also obtained basic knowledge of the building and handling of weapons.

For Kobylarz, the “Civil Defense” course had a completely different meaning: it was a frame in which the boys were finally allowed to play war. At that time as well as now, he is so engaged by the provisional and abstruse conception of homemade emergency equipment that he dedicated the entire exhibition to it.

As usual, archival materials form the point of origin for the work: he retraced the antique safety instructions, constructing their modern caricature. Today, one can find countless short films and documents about homemade weapons on the Internet. If one were to type “how to do + weapons” into a search engine, he or she would run into fabrications that can be quite dangerous, although in most cases the findings would be the extravagant fantasies of private tinkerers.

Kobylarz is interested in these constructions as an example of uncontrolled knowledge. As a dabbler endowed with the very Polish talent of being able to make anything out of nothing, he is also fascinated in the handiwork behind these objects. He has collected the examples that he found on the Internet and built an entire series of homemade versions for urban survival: a macaroni-bomb, a gasmask made of Coca Cola bottles, a smoke grenade constructed from a ping pong ball, a potato flint and a periscope fashioned out of an empty milk carton. ZAK BRANICKA displays these absurd and simultaneously comical, but surprisingly well functioning objects in classical weapon vitrines, strengthening the ambiguity between crackpot dabbling and dangerous reality.

With “Civil Defense” Kobylarz asks the questions, what happens to science if it takes a wrong turn? How far can science let itself be compromised and perverted? While working on this project, the artist transformed himself into a kook inventor and in that process he turned towards an antiquated artistic model: he has repositioned art between science and Utopia.

Roza Janiszewska, "Barsoi" @ TÄT Galerie Berlin

Image courtesy of TÄT

Roza Janiszewska's exhibition, Barsoi, closes tonight, 10.11.09
Finissage: 19.00 Uhr / 7 pm

TÄT is located at Schönhauser Allee 161, Berlin 10435

ZAK BRANICKA @ Artissima

ZAK BRANICKA presents


Katarzyna Kozyra, Zofia Kulik, Agnieszka Polska, Pawel Ksiazek and Hubert Czerepok
Booth: Verde B/Green B, No. 10
at Artissima '09 in Torino Italy
November 6-8th

Don't Miss...

From London to New York and then back to Berlin, here are some exhibition and performance highlights of Polish artists working internationally that are not to be missed:

In London:

Robert Kusmirowski's Bunker at the Barbican Art Gallery, London
http://www.barbican.org.uk/thecurve/blog/index.html


The Unilever Series: Miroslaw Balka presents How It Is in the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/unilevermiroslawbalka/default.shtm


"Balka intends to provide an experience for visitors which is both personal and collective, creating a range of sensory and emotional experiences through sound, contrasting light and shade, individual experience and awareness of others, perhaps provoking feelings of apprehension, excitement or intrigue."
- Tate Modern


In New York:

Performa '09

Rainer Ganahl presents "UBU Lenin" on Friday, November 13th 9:30pm
at the Swiss Institute
http://performa-arts.org/blog/rainer-ganahl/


Christian Tomaszewski and Joanna Malinowska present "Mother Earth, Sister Moon", Wednesday, November 4th - Saturday November 21st at varying times (check schedule)
at chashama 679


In Berlin:

You can still catch Robert Kusmirowski's photographs and objects at the Polish Institute until 13.11.09

and Domink Lejman's Afterparty at ZAK BRANICKA until 14.11.09