KRAKOW.- Due to their sheer size, difficulties with setting them up and their architectural requirements, installations are seldom presented as part of collection projects. At the exhibition Installation or Object? the museum is showing a dozen or so works from the MOCAK Collection. Some of them have never been exhibited before at MOCAK.

Installations are the result of the fragmentation of works of art, a process that started with the avant-garde of the 20th century. The installation arises through a juxtaposition of objects – ready-made or purpose-made for the occasion – with space. What matters most in an installation are the relationships between the elements or methods introduced by the artist and the space, which constitutes an integral part of the work.

In turn, an object is the result of a broadening of the definition of sculpture. It is a spatial form that eschews the nobility of the material and the deftness of manual craftwork – albeit without completely ruling either out. Usually, an object bears no direct relation to the space. Artists do, however, like to push boundaries – this includes the media used – and so works appear that oscillate between installation and object.

The exhibition Installation or Object? – within the scope defined by the title – probes the issue of the flexibility of media in contemporary art. The works on display have not been organised according to any particular theme. The exhibition aims to demonstrate what analytical, critical and also philosophical potential there is in an installation and an object – as well as how much most recent art owes to such experiences.

Mikołaj Smoczyński
Object, Space, Photography
The first in the series of exhibitions presenting the work of Mikołaj Smoczyński at MOCAK – based wholly on the artist’s works and the archive collection that the Museum received in 2011 as a gift from the artist’s heirs.

What links the presented exhibits are Smoczyński’s site-specific projects – unique structures prepared with concrete spaces in mind. The museum presents objects from the artist’s archive that in the past were used as the building material for these realisations. These are juxtaposed with Smoczyński’s black-and-white photographs which transcend the scope of mere photographic documentation and are without a doubt autonomous works of art.

Mikołaj Smoczyński (1955–2009) – associated with Lublin, where he lived and worked since his period of studying there (1975–1979) at the UMCS. Author of site-specific installations and monochromatic photographs, which often provide a creative record of his activities in gallery space. Sculptural activity and experimental photograph are hard to distinguish in the artist’s work.

Smoczyński presented his works in a few dozen individual exhibitions, including in San Diego (San Diego State University Art Gallery), Lyon (E.L.A.C.), New York (Art in General Gallery, International Studio Program) and Berlin (IFA Galerie). He received numerous awards, including the European Photography Award (1992) in Berlinie as well as grants, such as Quint Kirchman Projects (San Diego, 1991), Fondation d’Art de la Napoule, Memorial Henry Clews (La Napoule, 1993) and the International Program Studio (New Jork, 2001). Mikołaj Smoczyński’s works can be found in the collections of the most important cultural institutions in Poland and in numerous collections abroad.

Karol Radziszewski
America Is Not Ready For This
One wouldn’t really expect that 34 years after Natalia LL visited New York on a Kościuszko Foundation scholarship, there would still be some traces of her visit to be uncovered. In spite of that, in 2011 Karol Radziszewski decided to hit the trail and go to America to meet the artists and art dealers she met in 1977. With only a couple of black and white photographs and names of people she met, jotted down while listening to Natalia’s stories, Radziszewski undertook a unique research trip, which became a starting point in the search for parallels between his and Natalia LL’s artistic experiences.

The exhibition is the result of these meetings and consists of documentation of the interviews with, i.a., Vito Acconci, Carolee Schneemann and Marina Abramović, correspondence with artists and archival photos from the United States. All of this forms a new image of an artist crucial to Polish art history. ‘America is not ready for this’– the words of Leo Castelli, a famous art dealer and collector, uttered while viewing Natalia’s works, didn’t necessarily discredit her art in the eyes of American spectators. We can instead think of her visit, during which she both investigated art and tried to define her own artistic position, as the clash of two, completely isolated worlds. On the one hand – the New York bohemian lifestyle, where the cult of the artist (the white, heterosexual celebrity) still prevailed. On the other – the perspective of a female artist from Europe, specifically from the Soviet Bloc, where people thought that the issue of women’s emancipation has already been solved and normalised within the system. One of the most important works of Natalia LL from 1972 – Consumer Art – belied both of these beliefs. Eating a banana in an erotic way was one thing for Americans but meant something completely different to the citizens of the Polish People’s Republic.

What is interesting is that the time that had passed between these two journeys did not completely level out these differences. To Karol, Natalia’s history seemed particularly interesting precisely because of the similarities of the experience in the proclamation of the phenomena important for native art. At the time of her visit to New York, Natalia was very interested in the feminist discourse in art, which was in fact relatively unknown in Poland. Karol is perceived as one of the most important artists working on queer themes. In America these two issues were (and are) understood differently than in Poland – this difference is one of the topics of the conversations between Radziszewski and the artists interviewed on the occasion of his search for traces of Natalia. The film, which consists of clips from these interviews, is a special homage to Natalia LL, but one that is indirect and not over reverential. It sets out not so much to reconstruct the memories of the journey undertaken in 1977, as to take an in-depth look at the rules of engagement in the game in which artists jostle for position in the world of art; a game as topical today as it was then.