Filmoteka Muzeum

The film depicts Adres gallery – ‘the smallest gallery in the world’ which was active from 1972 at the Łódź headquarters of Association of Polish Art Photographers (ZPAF). The founder, Ewa Patrum, famous for questioning the institutional patterns imposed on artists, saw the gallery as a continuation of her work. It became a field for experiments, testing the limits of an institution and working out how it worked. It was initially promoted by a leaflet sent out to different artists and institutions: ‘The Address Gallery, Łódź, 86 Piotrowska Street. A place, situation, opportunity, offering of information, proposal, documentation, speculation, provocation, exposition of every possible presence of art or reasons for not showing it’. Mail art, which was a big part of the gallery’s activity, allowed for ‘releasing’ art from patterns and enabled selfless exchanging of ideas between artists.

References: Ewa Partum 1965-2001, exhibition catalogue, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe/National Museum, Warsaw 2001.