PROGRAMME COUNCIL

PROGRAMME COUNCIL OF THE BALTIC CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY

Members’ biographical entries

Izabela Kowalczyk (born in1971) is an art historian, cultural researcher, university teacher, critic, feature writer and feminist. She is an associate professor at the Liberal Arts and Journalism College in Poznan, and the editor of the internet magazine “Artmix” (at present a column of the “Obieg” magazine). Her blog on the Internet is called the dreadful art. Being a graduate from the institute of art history at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, she got the doctor’s degree in the area of history of liberal arts there in 2001. In 2012 she got the post-doctoral degree of liberal arts in the field of cultural expertness for her dissertation entitled Journey to the Past: interpretations of the newest history of Polish critical art. Since 2002 she has worked as an adjunct in the modern art history research unit of the Mikołaj Kopernik University in Torun. At present she works as a lecturer of cultural expertness in the Liberal Arts and Journalism College in Poznan, being there an associate professor since 2012. She has also run gender courses at the institute of literary research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

Izabela Kowalczyk is mainly interested in contemporary art that refers to questions of power and authority, carnality, sex, as well as historical traumas. She deals also with the entangling of art in politics as well as controversies that concern the political censorship of works of art, especially these that break taboos connected with religion, carnality and history. In her works she has used the feminist perspective.

In the years 2003-2006 she was an adviser of the Copernicus Bureau – a Polish-German cultural project at the Kulturstiftung des Bundes. She advised also during working out of the exhibition Gender Check /Sprawdzam płeć (mumok, Vienna, 2009 and Zachęta, Warsaw, 2010).

In 2001 she got the Jerzy Stajuda Artistic Critique Award for her book entitled Ciało i władza. Polska sztuka krytyczna lat 90. [Body and Power. Polish Critical Art of the 90s] and for her running the art magazine “Artmix” on the Internet.

Her selected publications include:

Niebezpieczne związki sztuki z ciałem [Dangerous Relations of Art and Body], Poznan 2002;
Ciało i władza. Polska sztuka krytyczna lat 90. [Body and Power. Polish Critical Art of the 90s], Ed. Wydawnictwo Sic!, Warsaw 2002;
Kobiety w kulturze popularnej [Women in Popular Culture], Wroclaw 2002, red. together with Edyta Zierkiewicz;
W poszukiwaniu małej dziewczynki [In Search for a Little Girl], Poznan 2003, red. together with Edyta Zierkiewicz;
Kobiety, feminizm i media [Women, feminism and the media], Poznan-Wroclaw 2005, red. together with Edyta Zierkiewicz;
Matki-Polki, Chłopcy i Cyborgi… sztuka i feminizm w Polsce [Polish Mothers, Boys and Cyborgs… Art and Feminism in Poland], 2010;
Podróż do przeszłości: interpretacje najnowszej historii w polskiej sztuce krytycznej [Journey to the Past: interpretations of the newest history of Polish critical art], 2010.

Sebastian Cichocki (born in1975) is a sociologist, curator and art critic.

Up to 2008 he was the director of the Centre for Contemporary Art Kronika in Bytom; at present he works at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. He had been a curator of many solo and group exhibitions, including Monika Sosnowska’s exhibition 1:1 at the Polish pavilion during the 52^nd Art Biennial in Venice and Yael Bartany’s … and Europe will be stunned at 54^th Venice Biennial. He deals mainly with the neo-conceptual reflection in art, referring to land-art, the environmental art of the 70s. He was also a curator or co-curator of such exhibitions as: Early Years, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2010); Daniel Knorr. Awake Asleep, Palace of Culture and Sciences, Warsaw (2008); Yane Calovski and Hristina Ivanoska. Oskar Hansen’s Museum of Modern Art, Centre for Contemporary Art Kronika, Bytom (2007); Sculptural Park in Bródno (including Susan Philipsz, Olafur Eliasson, Paweł Althamer and Rirkrit Tiravanija), Bródno Park, Warsaw, since 2009). He has been the author of numerous published curator projects, for example the exhibition Warsaw Does Not Exist (2007), and the anthology of exhibitions/texts The Future of Art Criticism as Pure Fiction. A Set of 19 Exhibition and One Collateral Event (2011), as well as librettos for institutional operas Spoken Exhibitions (with Michał Libera, Grzegrz Piątek and Jarosław Trybuś), short stories Psy z Üsküdar [Dogs from Üsküdar] (in collaboration with Joanna Rajkowska), and L.A.S.T. L.E.A.K., a ‘phantom novel’, scattered around in various artistic publications (since 2009 till now).

Sebastian Cichocki is an author of numerous critical texts that have been translated into many languages and editor of exhibition catalogues and anthologies. Among other magazines he has published his papers in the “Cabinet”, Artforum, IDEA Arts+Society, “Obieg”, FUKT, “Czas Kultury”, Mousse, 2+3D, “Magazyn Sztuki”, “Gazeta Wyborcza”, “Krytyka Polityczna”, and “Tygodnik Powszechny”. He is the editor of the humanistic magazine “Format P” which deals mainly with relations between literature and conceptual art. In 2011, in collaboration with Galit Eilat he published the book entitled A Cookbook for Political Imagination which accompanied Yael Bartany’s exhibition at the Polish pavilion during the Art Biennial in Venice. His book for children entitled S.Z.T.U.K.A. [A.R.T.] with illustrations by Aleksandra and Daniel Mizielińskis (ed. Dwie Siostry), containing 51 short stories on contemporary art appeared in the same year.

Adam Mazur (born in1977) is a Polish art historian, critic, and curator; as well as a specialist in American studies.

He works as a curator at the Centre of Contemporary Art Zamek Ujazdowski in Warsaw. He lectures on art history at the Social Psychology College, the Academy of Photography in Warsaw, as well as the curator studies at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. He is the editor-in-chief of the “Obieg” art magazine and a member of the editorial staff of the “Krytyka Polityczna” magazine. He is also a member of the Art Historians Society.

His main areas of interest include history and criticism of photography. He was a curator of such exhibitions as Red Eyes Effect (2008), Venus (2008), and New Documentarians (2006). In 2009 he announced his book I love photography which included a collection of his texts on photography; the widened and revised edition of the book appeared at the end of the very same year. In December 2008 at the faculty of history of the Warsaw University he defended his doctoral thesis entitled Photography in the widened field. Social and artistic uses of photography in Poland. On the basis of this work he announced a book Histories of photography in Poland 1839-2009, awarded at the 55^th Rev. Prof. Szczęsny Dettloff contest for scientific works by young art historians.

Publications:

Historie fotografii w Polsce 1839-2009 [Histories of photography in Poland 1839-2009], Krakow: Visual Art Foundation, 2009;
Kocham fotografię: wybór tekstów 1990-2009 [I love photography: selected articles 1990-2009], Warsaw: 40 000 Painters Association, 2009, (ed. I and II);
Decydujący moment. Nowe zjawiska w fotografii polskiej po 2000 roku [The decisive moment. New phenomena in Polish photography after the year 2000], Krakow: “Karakter”, 2012.

Mikołaj Iwański is a graduate in philosophy from the faculty of social sciences of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (2004). In 2012 he got the doctoral degree in economy, having defended his thesis on determinants of the development of Polish contemporary art market, at the faculty of economy of the Economic University in Poznan. The years 2006 and 2008-9 he spent on placements at the European Parliament and a lobbing office in Brussels. He is a lecturer at the art history and theory unit of the faculty of painting and new media of the Art Academy in Szczecin.

He has collaborated with the “Obieg” magazine and published his papers in “Magazyn Sztuki” art magazine, as well as in “Gazeta Wyborcza”, “Przegląd Powszechny”, and “#Format P”. Since 2013 he is a member of AICA. In 2012 he took part in the project Performative Lectures, preparing a performance Music of the Market Spheres together with Krzysztof Kaliski and Weronika Pełczyńska ( “Koło” Theatrical Studio, Warsaw). In a spring semester 2013 he ran an “Artist Cough” seminar within the framework of the Stanisław Brzozowski Society critical university (Warsaw). He is a member of the secretariat of the Citizens’ Forum of Contemporary Art, and a co-founder of the artistic milieu trade union.

He deals with market and social conditions of functioning of contemporary art. He has taken part in many projects, including Workers of the Artworld Unite (Centre of Contemporary Art Kronika, Bytom 2013); Martha Rosler, Poradnik dla zagubionych: jak odnieść sukces w nowej Polsce [A Guide for the lost: How to be a success in new Poland] (Contemporary Art Centre Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw 2014); Prolegomena do nauk ekonomicznych prowadzonych od kuchni. Trzydzieści lat Galerii Wschodniej [Prolegomena to economic sciences from the inside. Thirty years of the Wschodnia Gallery] (Museum of Art in Lodz, 2014), Ekonomiczne i społeczne mechanizmy produkcji kultury w polskim polu sztuki. Ogólnopolskie badania podziału, warunków i organizacji pracy w polu sztuki oraz ich wpływu na strategie, tożsamość i dążenia producentów kultury [Economic and social mechanisms of cultural production in Polish field of art. All-Poland’s research on conditions and organisation of work in the field of art and their influence on strategies, identity and aspirations of cultural producers], Free University of Warsaw / Bęc Zmiana Foundation, 2013-14)

Jacek Zdybel (born in1963 in Gdansk ) is a Polish painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pedagogue (with post-doctoral degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk). He studied at the same college in Gdansk, getting the diploma from Prof. Hugo Lasecki painting studio in 1990. Having started his teacher’s career as an assistant professor at Prof. Andrzej Dyakowski wall painting and stained glass making studio, he has run this studio after getting the degree in 1996. He cultivates design graphics, drawing, wall painting and stain glass making. He has taken part in 12 solo and around 20 group exhibitions in Poland and Europe.