As You Can See
Polish Art Today

As You Can See

"As You Can See: Polish Art Today" is the first show of current Polish art spanning such range for more than a decade. It centres around important works, attitudes, and themes commented on by visual artists over recent years.

The curators - Sebastian Cichocki and Łukasz Ronduda - have purposely reached for the conservative format of an artistic salon, shifting the centre of gravity from exhibition experiments to artworks themselves, whilst allowing the salon itself to be particular: critical, emancipatory, psychedelic, occasionally brutal and perverse, dense and ambiguous.

The exhibition was designed as a guidebook facilitating the journey across the territory of current art phenomena. It was created with a broad audience interested in contemporary culture in mind. It focuses on a specific time and place, and is being held at a rather specific moment: several years after Polish art stabilised its position internationally, and simultaneously to the process of Polish artistic institutions becoming professionalised and rather radical. The current set of circumstances seems to be a dream come true for previous generations of artists, whose presence in the field of art often tied in with a struggle for the shape and form of the art institution, and for the artist’s position in society. The situation itself, however, does not resolve all problems: paradoxically, it leads to the creation of new tensions between institutions and artists, and artists and audiences, respectively.

The exhibition focuses on how artists define their social role and obligations to a viewer, and how they negotiate their relations with institutions. As You Can See: Polish Art Today is a review of forms of seeing and perception, of desire, of being together and being alone, of understanding reality, and of relating to the past and future. The exhibition relates both to the artists’ private space and developing relations with objects of everyday use or with architecture, and to the – ever-unconquered – territory of social change, to attempts at modifying the world with tools of art put to use.

The "As You Can See: Polish Art Today" exhibition traces the current moment in the Polish art scene by grouping artworks and art phenomena into a series of narrations. A distinctly pronounced motive is that of avant-garde strategies having been exhausted and replaced by a search for inspiration in areas which could have previously been considered “compromised”: non-professional art, crafts, or academism. “Bourgeois” art, contemporary graphics, and extra-urban art (contemporary folk art, created contrary to recent opinions that contemporary art is a purely urban phenomenon) have all been gaining new allies.

Throughout the exhibition, the Emilia pavilion shall be gazing at the city with huge eyes wide open, an object of unique anthropomorphisation (Paulina Ołowska’s glass paintings in a reference to Jerzy Kolecki’s posters). The exhibition centres around what you can see, on how you see it, and on what becomes visible through and in art.

See also:

Archive Events connected with the exhibition:

DzieńGodzinaNazwa wydarzeniaMiejsce wydarzenia
19:00 Vernissage As You Can SeePolish Art Today Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
14:00 Guided tour Saturday Guided Tours Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
14:00 Guided tour Saturday Guided TourIn cycle „Saturday Guided Tours” Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
14:00 Guided tour Saturday Guided TourIn cycle „Saturday Guided Tours” Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
14:00 Guided tour Saturday Guided TourIn cycle „Saturday Guided Tours” Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
14:00 Guided tour Saturday Guided TourIn cycle „Saturday Guided Tours” Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
14:00 Guided tour Saturday Guided TourIn cycle „Saturday Guided Tours” Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
14:00 Guided tour Saturday Guided TourIn cycle „Saturday Guided Tours” Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
14:00 Guided tour Saturday Guided TourIn cycle „Saturday Guided Tours” Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
17:30 Guided tour Killing the fathers. Piotr Uklański and Neo Avant-gardeConducted by Łukasz Ronduda
In cycle „The Close-Up”
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
14:00 Guided tour Saturday Guided TourIn cycle „Saturday Guided Tours” Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
17:30 Guided tour The material turn. Objects that become an art
In cycle „The Close-Up”
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
12:00 Session As You Can See.Debate about Polish art now
In cycle „As You Can See”
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
14:00 Guided tour Saturday Guided TourIn cycle „As You Can See” Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
18:00 Meeting Disassembly - on science, art and celluloseMeeting with Bownik
In cycle „As You Can See”
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
10:00 Excursion Field game in KurówkoIn cycle „As You Can See” Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
14:00 Guided tour Saturday Guided TourIn cycle „As You Can See” Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
18:00 Workshops Oxbow lakeWorkshops with Bianka Rolando
In cycle „As You Can See”
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Small Auditorium
Pańska 3, Warsaw
14:00 Guided tour Saturday Guided TourIn cycle „As You Can See” Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
18:00 Meeting Gender and the CountryMeeting with Michał Łagowski and Daniel Rycharski
In cycle „As You Can See”
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
14:00 Guided tour Saturday Guided Tour\"As You Can See\" exibiton - guided by Urszula Mandziewska
In cycle „As You Can See”
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
18:00 Meeting A Horse Escapes From the ChimneyMeeting with Anda Rottenberg and Leszek Knaflewski
In cycle „As You Can See”
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
12:00 Concert Boring Drug in Bródno Sculpture ParkThe concert as part of \"As You Can Hear\" series
In cycle „As You Can Hear”
Bródno Park
Kondratowicza/Chodecka, Warsaw
17:00 Guided tour Thursday Guided Tour in RussianПо четвергам туры с экскурсоводом на русском языке Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
19:30 Event Bohdan Mazurek in memoriamIn cycle „As You Can Hear” Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
17:00 Guided tour Thursday Guided Tour in RussianПо четвергам туры с экскурсоводом на русском языке Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
19:30 Concert Anna ZaradnyThe concert as part of \"As You Can Hear\" series
In cycle „As You Can Hear”
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
17:00 Guided tour Thursday Guided Tour in RussianПо четвергам туры с экскурсоводом на русском языке Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
19:30 Concert ATOM™ & Jacek SienkiewiczThe concert as part of \"As You Can Hear\" series
In cycle „As You Can Hear”
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
17:00 Guided tour Thursday Guided Tour in RussianПо четвергам туры с экскурсоводом на русском языке Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
17:00 Guided tour Thursday Guided Tour in RussianПо четвергам туры с экскурсоводом на русском языке Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
19:30 Concert Karkowski - XenakisPart of the series “As You Can Hear”
In cycle „As You Can Hear”
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
17:00 Guided tour Thursday Guided Tour in RussianПо четвергам туры с экскурсоводом на русском языке Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw
20:00 Concert RSS B0YS | Wilhelm BrasThe concert as part of \"As You Can Hear\" series
In cycle „As You Can Hear”
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilia Pavilion
ul. Emilii Plater 51, Warsaw