10.11.2023 (Friday), 5:30 pm at the Music School Complex (1 Młodych St. - 200m from the Museum)
Exhibition CONTINUATIONS Authors: W. Beszterda / Z. Kawalec-Łuszczewska / A. Lejba / T. Lietzau / R. Łuszczewski / M. Mrówka / T. Ogrodnik / P. Spek
Opening: 10.11.2023 (Friday), 19:00 Gallery of the S. Staszic Museum, Pila, 18 Browarna St.
Witold Kanicki
CONTINUATIONS
(...) The peculiarity of the Pila Gallery at the Stanislaw Staszic Museum lies not only in the program built largely from photographic projects, or in the peculiarities of the difficult exhibition space of the historic building, where small rooms and competing architectural details significantly limit the artists' field of action, but also in many other uniquenesses. In addition to an audience composed mostly of residents of Sawmill who are interested in culture, certainly one of the peculiarities of this institution is also the group of artists who are associated with this place in various ways. The exhibition Continuations, realized on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Gallery's operation, is precisely a review of current works of art created by artists whose relationship with this institution goes beyond the previous exhibition cooperation. This is because all participants in the project are closely connected with this place, through active participation in the Museum's program, co-organization of some events, being a permanent part of the audience, and even through the very connection with Pila - which is their place of life or birth.
Thus, representatives of three generations of local artists - Zofia Kawalec-Luszczewska, Anna Lejba, Tomasz Lietzau, Rafał Łuszczewski, Marta Mrówka, Tadeusz Ogrodnik, Piotr Speka - were invited to the Continuations project, while the dual role (artist and curator) was taken on by the space's caretaker, Wojciech Beszterda. Their task was to create new works, which in a continuing or polemical way referred to the work they had previously practiced. Despite the ties to the Gallery common to all participants, the review of works thus constructed adopted a formula emphasizing diversity and multithreading. In fact, in addition to the projects starting from the photographic medium clearly dominating the twenty-year program of the institution, the exhibition also featured painting and graphic works. (...)
An environmental exhibition based on such contrasts makes us aware of the multidirectionality of contemporary art, which cannot be closed within the strict framework of trends and content. For the specificity of the exhibition venue - the Gallery of the Stanislaw Staszic Museum - also lies in breaking the imposed frameworks and conventions.
Witold Kanicki excerpts of text from the catalog of the exhibition Continuations, Staszic Museum Gallery, Pila, 2023.
Witold Kanicki
Pilsen's gallery of picture-makers
(...) Operating outside the capital, within narrow city budgets, galleries of this kind usually fulfill a dual function. On the one hand, they allow local cultural audiences to get acquainted with art from other regions of the country and even the world; on the other hand, they activate local artistic circles, becoming a municipal forum for the presentation and discussion of art. The gallery at the Stanislaw Staszic Museum in Pila has played its role in these two areas for 20 years. It has featured both figures of artists representing Pila and its environs (Wojciech Beszterda, Zofia Kawalec-Łuszczewska, Anna Lejba, Tomasz Lietzau, Rafał Łuszczewski, Marta Mrówka, Tadeusz Ogrodnik, Piotr Spek, Andrzej Tomaszewski, Anastazy Bogdan Wiśniewski), as well as artists of various generations recognized in Poland or abroad (Michał Bugalski, Andrzej Dudek-Dürer, Andrzej P. Florkowski, Walter Hinghaus & Susanna Pfeiffer, Romualdas Požerskis, Waldemar Jama, Jacek Jagielski, Andrzej Leśnik, Inge-Lise Ravn, Rafał Łubowski, Andrzej Strumiłło, Rosław Szaybo, Waldemar Świerzy, Zbigniew Tomaszczuk, Witold Węgrzyn, Stefan Wojnecki, Stanisław Woś and others). (...)
The author's exhibition program, based primarily on the choices and curatorial initiatives of Wojciech Beszterda, focused on photography, although other media (painting, graphics and even contemporary sculpture) also complemented the rich offer of the place, where more than 130 exhibitions were realized over 20 years. The Gallery's area of activity sometimes went beyond the confines of the small rooms of the Stanislaw Staszic Museum, taking its own initiatives to other institutions. Its impressive exhibition program was complemented by accompanying events - lectures, concerts, meetings with photographers, panel discussions, film presentations and workshops, as well as publishing initiatives. (...)
Already the first exhibition presented in the gallery space - the project Noises, clusters, strings by Andrzej Zygmuntowicz - is in line with some aspects of photographic subjectivity. Looking at the color photographs created as part of this series, the viewer can see object-like shapes - usually fragments of surfaces (sidewalks, roads, natural ground), which, due to the means of photographic expression used, instead of fulfilling the function of visual documents, work well as modernist abstractions, directing viewers to purely visual experiences. (...)
A strong group of exhibition projects carried out in the spaces of the Stanislaw Staszic Museum Gallery are co-created by various realizations that start from the essential qualities of the photographic medium, its historical or analog foundations. Such certainly include the photographs of Stefan Wojnecki , who for most of his life explored the essence of the medium, often focusing on the phenomenon of trace. While the doyen of the Poznan school of photography was concerned with the indexicality of photography, another extremely important and respected photographer - Zbigniew Tomaszczuk - placed emphasis on the issue of time, "gluing together" a photograph from overlapping layers . The issues of photographic temporality, but also the fundamental negativity of this medium, are recurrent in the work of the photographer from Pila - Piotr Spek . The theme of cemeteries, which is close to Spek, also appeared in the project of Michał Jakubowicz , who - working in the space of a Jewish cemetery in Wroclaw - used photosensitive emulsion, allowing nature to record its own image. Probably with the roots of the medium can also be associated the idea behind the cyclical exhibition events shown in the gallery spaces - the biennial of miniatures . The small formats presented at these events, which fit best into the framework of the Museum's small-scale space, strongly contrasted with the contemporary tendency to maximize the photographic image, while returning to the origins of the medium and the tradition of contact prints.
Although a subjective, emotional, creative and metamedia approach clearly dominated Wojciech Beszterda's curatorial program, his artistic choices sometimes included other attitudes, thus attesting to the Gallery's openness. In this context, one can point out, for example, the guest exhibition of monidels - a photographic practice trivialized in the studies of contemporary theorists of the medium. The curator was also familiar with the conventions of portraiture and nudes, and on several occasions made the Gallery's space available to the youngest generation of artists.
The rich and multifaceted program of the Stanislaw Staszic Museum Gallery as described above makes this place an extremely valuable, culture-creating center, whose influence on successive generations of local art audiences cannot be overestimated. Many of the activities initiated by this institution leave their mark both on the community of Pila and on external viewers who come to the Gallery during their stays in the city. What is worth emphasizing, the undertakings of this place are often a form of stimulation, provoking new artistic projects or a deeper reflection on the essence of photography and contemporary art.
Witold Kanicki excerpts of text from the book "Gallery of S. Staszic Museum 2003 - 2023", Piła, 2023
Dr. Witold Kanicki, Department of Art Education and Curating, University of Arts in Poznan https://wydawnictwowolno.pl/ksiegarnia/waclaw-nowak-polaroid/ https://terytoria.com.pl/1007-ujemny-biegun-fotografii.html
Gallery of the S. Staszic Museum in Piła 2003-2023
The past years have seen more than 210 projects carried out under the banner of the Staszic Museum Gallery. These included exhibitions of contemporary art (individual and collective), workshops, meetings, concerts of jazz music and sung poetry.
Artists of recognized reputation (professors of art schools) have exhibited their works at the gallery, including: Andrzej Strumillo, Stefan Wojnecki, Roslaw Szaybo, Waldemar Swierzy, Waldemar Jama, Andrzej P. Florkowski, Piotr Wolynski, Adam Myjak, Jacek Jagielski and many others, but also debut students of the Academy of Fine Arts. Among the presented authors are also artists from Pila. We also hosted artists from abroad (Germany, Denmark, Lithuania) and presented their exhibitions in other galleries in Poland and abroad (Germany, Denmark).
Posters, invitations, catalogs were issued for all the projects carried out.
In total, the Gallery organized and presented:
More than 130 exhibitions of paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, sculptures
More than 40 concerts of jazz, poetic and popular music
More than 30 author meetings with prominent personalities from the world of art
About 10 educational workshops for children, teenagers and adults