PRE-LOCK-UP STAGE Da­niel Cy­bul­ski, Radosław De­ru­ba, Emil­ia Kina, Filip Ryb­kow­ski, Ro­bert Sei­kon, Michał Sroka 28 IV 2017 – 9 VII 2017 Gdańsk City Gal­lery CUR­ATOR Gab­rie­la Wa­rzyc­ka-Tu­tak, Aleksander Ce­lusta

There’ll be a new spark between us,
We’ll find bril­liance and charm,
We’ll fin­ish the sad shop­ping,
Of ar­ti­fi­cial mall hap­pi­ness,
And it’ll be like it used to be,
Let us stop rush­ing,
Let us start all over again,
From these small things.

Syl­wia Grzeszczak, Small Things (2011)

In the au­tumn of 1985, Mod­erna Museet in Stock­holm hos­ted the ex­hib­i­tion Dia­logue. The par­ti­cipants in­cluded eight Pol­ish artists af­fil­i­ated with the mi­lieu of the Fok­sal Gal­lery. Since the for­mula of the show was based on the eponym­ous dia­logue, each of the artists was given a chance to in­vite an­other artist from abroad. Thus, the show fea­tured: Henryk Stażewski – Da­niel Buren, Ed­ward Krasiński – Lars En­glund, Maria Stan­gret – Chris­tian Boltanski, Zbig­niew Gostom­ski – Barry Flanagan, Lesław and Wacław Jan­icki – Gil­bert & George, To­masz Tatar­czyk – Susan Rothen­berg, Leon Tarasewicz – Ian McK­eeyer. As a mat­ter of fact, the artists in­vited to par­ti­cip­ate in the ex­hib­i­tion never met. There­fore, the form of the dia­logue be­came merely a har­binger and an im­pres­sion, and the ex­hib­i­tion it­self – a col­lage of thoughts and con­tent as well as a kind of sim­u­la­tion of get­ting to know each other. On the other hand, it ad­op­ted the role of the cre­ator of dia­lect­ical thought, which res­on­ates through mul­ti­di­men­sional in­vest­ig­a­tions, grant­ing prom­in­ence to ex­per­i­ence. Dia­logue posed a ques­tion about the form and sense of cre­at­ing this type of activ­it­ies.

In the end of Septem­ber 2013, the TV sta­tion Polsat broad­casts the first epis­ode of the show Our New House. It is based on the trus­ted Amer­ican pro­duc­tions of the same sort. The fam­il­ies se­lec­ted to par­ti­cip­ate live in dread­ful con­di­tions, and their fin­an­cial status is very low. Under the vi­gil­ant eye of the cam­era, spe­cial­ists ex­change ideas, ra­cing against the clock and ad­versit­ies. The crew of the show, headed by Katar­zyna Dow­bor, achieves what ap­pears to be an im­possible goal and ren­ov­ates the house of a se­lec­ted fam­ily within five days, thus giv­ing its mem­bers an er­satz of lux­ury and sta­bil­ity. The fam­ily mem­bers be­come act­ors who are left alone in their “new real­ity” after “the last clap” that an­nounces the end of shoot­ing. Il­lu­min­ated by the glow of the cam­eras and celebrit­ies, they are sup­posed to start a bet­ter life with a sense of their own unique­ness.

These two stor­ies provide a kind of par­al­lel for the activ­it­ies un­der­taken by the artists and cur­at­ors of the ex­hib­i­tion Pre-Lock-Up Stage. It is the second ex­hib­i­tion within the pro­ject North – South, whose goal con­sists in con­front­ing artists from two op­pos­ite ends of Po­land. Thus, the ques­tion of dia­logue in­deed be­comes rel­ev­ant.

The evoked tele­vi­sion show with Katar­zyna Dow­bor re­sembles the activ­ity un­der­taken by the cre­at­ors of the pro­ject. Hav­ing ex­actly five days to go, the tech­nical crew headed by Gab­rie­la Wa­rzyc­ka-Tu­tak and Aleksander Ce­lusta em­barked on in­stalling the show. De­prived of its tra­di­tional ex­hib­i­tion func­tion, the gal­lery in­terior is re­duced here primar­ily to the paint­erly role and rank, it be­comes a base on which the wall be­comes the car­rier of con­tent. The nar­rat­ive of the ex­hib­i­tion de­vel­ops in a con­stant re­la­tion with the in­vited artists. The in­stall­a­tion stage be­comes an ex­per­i­ence, an at­tempt to unify ar­chi­tec­ture, sculp­ture and paint­ing, thus blur­ring the bor­der between art and life. The aim of this stage is to cre­ate a com­mon “world” of the artist and the viewer.

PRESS Szum O.pl PHO­TO­GRAPHY Emil­ia Kina, Filip Ryb­kow­ski GRAPH­ICS Bar­bara Dzied­zic (cour­tesy of GGM) NEXT PRO­JECT→