AWAKE AND DREAM / SVEGLIATI E SOGNA / OBUDŹCIE SIĘ, ABY ŚNIĆ
Curated by Grzegorz Musiał, Andrzej Turowski
Tuesday, Saturday 10 a.m. - 7 p.m.
photos from the exhibition opening
the exhibition opening on Obieg.pl
The title of the exhibition at the Palazzo Donà in Venice, Awake and Dream, hints at the painful sense of the world's emptiness (which does not let us dream) and the desire to attain full cognition of reality (which is a dream). This paradox produces tension, which inspires creativity. The exhibition set in this context is framed by the Collector's Cabinet (the collection of the Signum Foundation, Palazzo Donà) and the Spectacle of Venice (Venice Art Biennale). The conceptual guidelines for the display were set by the writings of Georges Perec.
The two great myths of the Western culture: the myth of Oedipus (see Katarzyna Kozyra's "Il Castrato") and the myth of Narcissus (in Jacek Malczewski's "Self portrait"), define, with a dose of bathos, the starting point for the display just as one enters the courtyard ("Narcissus, metaphor, costume"). The first of those myths confronts us with the concept of identity (i.e. "life"), the second with the problem of illusion (or "art"). Both reveal deeply hidden passions, hovering on the edge of emerging incompleteness (Kozyra) and the finality of death (Malczewski). After this introduction, we may enter the labyrinthine spaces of the exhibition.
One route leads us through the nooks and corners of the courtyard to a slight elevation, then down towards the canals. Let us call it, somewhat grandly, the space of cognition ("Books, copies, mythologies"). It is here, near the entrance, under the stairs, that we encounter a damp chapel of a heretic, a sordid laboratory of an alchemist, the very essence of dark and secret knowledge (Robert Kuśmirowski). Further on, at a bend in the wall, curtained off, but filled with light, one finds the Library (Nicolas Grospierre), whose infinite rows of bookshelves seem to evidence the power of the knowledge they contain. Behind the door, in the nooks of the storeroom, among abandoned wooden boxes, one finds the installation created by Miroslaw Bałka; its rusty shapes, once elements of a rigorous form, have accumulated the experience of memory and the traces of an absent body. Next to it, the mezzanine features the works of Tadeusz Kantor, with his umbrella-shaped figure exploding the canvas, with his hope of grasping banal reality in a happening, with his dramatic return to the image and his symbolic falling ("Images, scraps, falls"). The works of the artists displayed on this level seem to be looking for or ridiculing the lost presence of God, Reason, Man, and Form.
Another route leads the visitor up the grand stairs, to the piano nobile and the private part of the palace. This route may be called, slightly ironically, the route of deconstruction and criticism, but also of passion, madness, excess. It is begun by a motto, explaining the rationale of the exhibition:
Wake up to dream... is the space spanning between the perilous emptiness of unspecified desire, fathomless perplexity, and the illusion of reality measured by the fascinating fullness of the spectacle played out before our eyes. The hidden message of this spectacle seems to be coming from all of those who have built a vicious circle of insatiable creation out of love and anger, passion and doubt, the desire to lose themselves and the risk of transgression, the acute dismay, and the futility of hope, the ardour of the body and the greed for power... Wake up to dream.
(from an outline guide to the exhibition by Andrzej Turowski)
The exhibition was accompanied by a book of the same title in English and Italian with a complete photographic documentation, essays by Giorgio Agamben, Janusz K. Glowacki, Grzegorz Musial, Andrzej Turowski, and biographical notes of the participating artists.
"Awake and Dream", Venice 2009, 296 pages
Curated by Grzegorz Musiał, Andrzej Turowski
22.05.2009 - 28.11.2009
Palazzo Donà, Venice
Tuesday, Saturday 10 a.m. - 7 p.m.
9.06.2009 - 28.11.2009
Wednesday, Saturday 4 p.m. - 7 p.m.
free admission
photos from the exhibition opening
the exhibition opening on Obieg.pl
Artists
Paweł Althamer, Mirosław Bałka, Janusz Maria Brzeski, Nicoals Grospierre, Tadeusz Kantor, Andrzej Karmasz, Eustachy Kossakowski, Katarzyna Kobro, Katzarzyna Kozyra, Jerzy Kujawski, Zofia Kulik, Robert Kuśmirowski, Dominik Lejman, Zbigniew Libera, Natalia LL., Jacek Malczewski, Kaziemierz Malewicz, Michał Martychowiec, Agata Michowska, Luca Mosca, Krzysztof Niemczyk, Emeka Okereke, Qudus Onikeku, Roman Opałka, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bruno Schulz, Grupa Sędzia Główny (Karolina Wiktor i Aleksandra Kubiak), Antoni Starczewski, Karol Szymanowski, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy), Krzysztof Wodiczko;
The title of the exhibition at the Palazzo Donà in Venice, Awake and Dream, hints at the painful sense of the world's emptiness (which does not let us dream) and the desire to attain full cognition of reality (which is a dream). This paradox produces tension, which inspires creativity. The exhibition set in this context is framed by the Collector's Cabinet (the collection of the Signum Foundation, Palazzo Donà) and the Spectacle of Venice (Venice Art Biennale). The conceptual guidelines for the display were set by the writings of Georges Perec.
The two great myths of the Western culture: the myth of Oedipus (see Katarzyna Kozyra's "Il Castrato") and the myth of Narcissus (in Jacek Malczewski's "Self portrait"), define, with a dose of bathos, the starting point for the display just as one enters the courtyard ("Narcissus, metaphor, costume"). The first of those myths confronts us with the concept of identity (i.e. "life"), the second with the problem of illusion (or "art"). Both reveal deeply hidden passions, hovering on the edge of emerging incompleteness (Kozyra) and the finality of death (Malczewski). After this introduction, we may enter the labyrinthine spaces of the exhibition.
One route leads us through the nooks and corners of the courtyard to a slight elevation, then down towards the canals. Let us call it, somewhat grandly, the space of cognition ("Books, copies, mythologies"). It is here, near the entrance, under the stairs, that we encounter a damp chapel of a heretic, a sordid laboratory of an alchemist, the very essence of dark and secret knowledge (Robert Kuśmirowski). Further on, at a bend in the wall, curtained off, but filled with light, one finds the Library (Nicolas Grospierre), whose infinite rows of bookshelves seem to evidence the power of the knowledge they contain. Behind the door, in the nooks of the storeroom, among abandoned wooden boxes, one finds the installation created by Miroslaw Bałka; its rusty shapes, once elements of a rigorous form, have accumulated the experience of memory and the traces of an absent body. Next to it, the mezzanine features the works of Tadeusz Kantor, with his umbrella-shaped figure exploding the canvas, with his hope of grasping banal reality in a happening, with his dramatic return to the image and his symbolic falling ("Images, scraps, falls"). The works of the artists displayed on this level seem to be looking for or ridiculing the lost presence of God, Reason, Man, and Form.
Another route leads the visitor up the grand stairs, to the piano nobile and the private part of the palace. This route may be called, slightly ironically, the route of deconstruction and criticism, but also of passion, madness, excess. It is begun by a motto, explaining the rationale of the exhibition:
Wake up to dream... is the space spanning between the perilous emptiness of unspecified desire, fathomless perplexity, and the illusion of reality measured by the fascinating fullness of the spectacle played out before our eyes. The hidden message of this spectacle seems to be coming from all of those who have built a vicious circle of insatiable creation out of love and anger, passion and doubt, the desire to lose themselves and the risk of transgression, the acute dismay, and the futility of hope, the ardour of the body and the greed for power... Wake up to dream.
(from an outline guide to the exhibition by Andrzej Turowski)
The exhibition was accompanied by a book of the same title in English and Italian with a complete photographic documentation, essays by Giorgio Agamben, Janusz K. Glowacki, Grzegorz Musial, Andrzej Turowski, and biographical notes of the participating artists.
"Awake and Dream", Venice 2009, 296 pages
