2023
WITCHES’ TOWN AND CHAMBER GALLERY IN SŁUPSK
12/01 – 26/03/2023
Natalia Czarcińska, Dorota Tarnowska-Urbanik, Jerzy Muszyński
Common gestures / collective exhibition
Curator: Roman Lewandowski
The “Common Gestures” exhibition is intended to be an articulation of the dialogical thinking of artists who are associated with the University of Arts and the Szewska Gallery in Poznań on a daily basis. The exhibition is intended to be an attempt to look at the idea of community, and the “common gestures” made by the artists are to be an articulation of the common denominator they “feel”.
C CREATIVE ACTIVITY CENTER IN USTKA
12/01 – 26/03/2023
Bianka Rolando / Rol-A-Drop Twin Jack Pot / solo exhibition
Curator: Roman Lewandowski
The theme of the solo exhibition “Rol-A-Drop Twin Jack Pot” is the so-called a “dream machine” once sketched by poet Elizabeth Bishop. It resembles (due to the drawing reels) a one-armed bandit machine. A series of such machines produced in the 1940s had this name: Rol-a-top Twin Jack Pot. The poem opens questions about similarity-relation (which wins), but also difference-variety. The medium that talks about matrix nature and the difference between varieties and prints is graphics. I would like to show a series of several dozen lithographs (multiple prints from various matrices) and drawings, including drawings on lithographs, created in 2020 and last year. Some of the lithographs were published in my last volume of poetry “Ostańce”, just like the poem above. The lithographs are personally printed (from stones) by me. The prints and drawings will be supplemented with the author’s poetic commentary.
WITCHES’ TOWN AND CHAMBER GALLERY IN SŁUPSK / C CREATIVE ACTIVITY CENTER IN USTKA
30/03 – 25/06/2023
Krzysztof Nowicki, Łukasz Patelczyk, Filip Wierzbicki-Nowak
Refigurations / group exhibition
Curator: Roman Lewandowski
In the autobiographical Memoirs of Malte-Laurids Brigge (1910), Rainer Maria Rilke writes that “There are many people, but many more faces, because everyone has several of them. There are people who wear one face for years, even though “the face wears out” and “falls apart like gloves worn while traveling.” The “Refigurations” exhibition, in its perverse name, refers to the implementation procedures and titles of the painting cycles of the three invited artists. At the same time, the exhibition is intended to be a part of the art that uses the technique and aesthetics of collage and patchwork. As a result, the entire project is to consist of the actions, works and artistic gestures of artists who, although not linked by a common biography, are brought closer or connected by aesthetic and semantic games.
WITCHES’ TOWN AND CHAMBER GALLERY IN SŁUPSK / C CREATIVE ACTIVITY CENTER IN USTKA
8/07 – 8/10/2023
HUMAN / international exhibition
Curators / Edyta Wolska and Oksana Karpovets
Artists: Tereza Barabash, Yuriy Bolsa, Grzegorz Bożek, Piotr Desperak, Alevtina Kakhidze, Ola Kozioł & Suavas Lewy, Myro Klochko & Anatoliy Tatarenko, Paweł Korbus, Dmytro Krasnyi, Zdzisław Pacholski, Sergiy Petlyuk, Andriy Rachinskiy & Daniil Revkovskiy, Vasyl Savchenko, Vahram Mkhitarya, Ewa Zarzycka, Krzysztof Zając
The vicious cycle of human-made and repeated disasters for thousands of years has brought us to a standstill and undermined our faith in humanity and the future. Has the civilizational development of humanism really occurred? Or will the primitive human instincts of domination, control and possession remain untamed even in the face of the destruction of humanity and the Earth? The works presented at the exhibition reflect the common sense of the imminent self-annihilation of the human race as a result of the irreversible effects of environmental degradation, the nuclear threat and the war in Ukraine, which in fact has a wide impact on the functioning of the entire world. Yet the authors of the works presented at the exhibition do not remain passive observers. The artists analyze the intersections of historical memory and the socio-political realities of the present, at the same time rejecting individual melancholy in favor of multidimensional forms of criticism, resistance and indifference. The exhibition as a whole is devoid of utopian illusions framed by anthropocentric, modern logic, and is instead based on a dystopian perspective and the recognition that coexistence is inherently in conflict. How we use this conflictual nature of coexistence to solve the environmental and humanitarian crises we face today will largely determine the future we live in. /Oksana Karpovets/
We live in a world in which our society has been burdened with uncertainty about the future and a sense of spiritual fragmentation, and our bonds of belonging have been put to a severe test. In the face of the ongoing war in Ukraine, culture should play an important role to strengthen our sense of identity in the democratic world. Art also has an importance that cannot be overestimated, because like a barometer it reflects the instability of the world and the process of creation, dissolution and re-establishment of values.
The “Human” exhibition is intended to integrate artists’ efforts towards a world that gives us a minimum of certainty for tomorrow and mutual solidarity. The global crises, and in particular the Russian aggression against Ukraine, prove that a person can lose loved ones overnight and have their social environment shaken.
We live in times when there are over twenty armed conflicts around the world. However, public opinion was most shocked by the crimes of genocide in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities. For a person living in the world after Auschwitz and Bucza, all fundamental narratives have lost their power. Perhaps the world and man need to be reinvented. “Human” is a project that aims to be a new voice and a new narrative in an still old world.
Shortly after the outbreak of the war and Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, refugee artists and their children were invited to the Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art, who stayed in our institution for half a year. During their stay, during numerous meetings, workshops and conversations, the initial concept of the “Human” exhibition was born, which arose from the natural need to refer to the issue of the war in Ukraine, the artists directly affected by it and their relatives. The authors of the project concept are Oksana Karpovets from Ukraine and Edyta Wolska – director of the Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art in Słupsk. The concept of the project goes beyond immediate circumstances and assumes the presentation of works that illustrate the humanistic fracture that affected the world and culture long before Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Modern man lives with the baggage of difficult experiences and as an individual, torn by the winds of history, who must reunite the world. Therefore, the aim of the exhibition is an attempt to describe and tell the world anew. “Human” is a project to which the curators – Oksana Karpovets and Edyta Wolska – invited artists mainly from Poland and Ukraine.
WITCHES’ TOWN IN SŁUPSK
12/10/2023 – 7/01/2024
Marta Frej / The vulva or shame / individual exhibition
Marta Frej Visual artist, president of the Kulturoholizm Foundation, Maciek’s mother, activist, feminist. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts. Władysław Strzemiński in Łódź. She obtained her diploma in 2004. In the years 2005–2009 she was an assistant in the Painting and Drawing Studio of Marek Czajkowski at the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź. Winner of the Glasses of Equality 2015 award, awarded by the Foundation. Izabela Jaruga-Nowacka. Co-author of the book “Memes and Graffy” with Agnieszka Graff. Winner of the Olśnienia Onet 2017 award in the art category. Author of the book “120 faces of Marta Frej” and the herstory comic “Dromaderki”, created as part of a scholarship from the Marshal of the Silesian Voivodeship in 2018. An illustrator who permanently cooperates with Gazeta Wyborcza and Polityka weekly. The most popular works are paintings with captions illustrating the contemporary life of women in Poland. The works, which took the form of paintings, were exhibited in various galleries throughout Poland.
“Vulva or Shame” is an interdisciplinary exhibition by Marta Frej consisting of two parts: press illustrations and graphics created since 2016 regarding women’s rights and the situation of women in Poland, and artistic ceramics created since 2021, the topic of which is female corporeality in the context of shame, reduced to taboo. The exhibition is a summary of recent years of work illustrating the social and political situation of women in Poland and the public debate related to the perception of women and their role in society. The location of the project, the “Witches’ Tower”, is not accidental. The Witches’ Tower was built in 1411-1415. In the 17th century, the defensive tower was rebuilt into a prison for women accused of witchcraft. According to available archival sources, 18 women were executed here. They lost their lives for their knowledge, willingness to help other women, failure to conform to moral norms, courage and love of freedom. For fighting for yourself. It was no accident that the slogan “We are the granddaughters of the witches you failed to burn” often appeared on the Women’s Strike banners. Because the contemporary fight for women’s rights is a fight for human rights, i.e. the right to bodily integrity and autonomy, to active and passive participation in elections, to hold public offices, to work, to fair and equal pay with men, to education and military service. , concluding contracts, to freedom in the field of family, parenting and religion. The exhibition “Vulva or Shame” neither gives nor provides answers, but asks many questions and invites discussion about what is difficult, willingly ignored, swept under the carpet and hidden in the closet.
CHAMBER GALLERY IN SŁUPSK / C CREATIVE ACTIVITY CENTER IN USTKA
12/10/2023 – 7/01/2024
Zbigniew Blukacz, Janina Janicka Grabowska, Iwona Rozbiewska, Urszula Ślusarczyk
Archimetries / collective exhibition
curator: Roman lewandowski
“Archimetries” is a project of a collective exhibition, which is intended to present the issues of broadly understood agglomeration aesthetics and the language of geometry that organizes it. It is no secret to anyone that the history, form and way of organizing the city are components of a larger social reality, which – like all culture – has a symbolic and relational character, which consequently means that we can treat the city as a space of writing (or text) ” general”. The city in this understanding is a textual and semiotic structure brought to life by individual and collective entities. It is symptomatic that the works presented at the exhibition are not works clearly realized in the spirit of abstraction, because their authors’ intention is also to search for connections with the surroundings and the urban environment, and therefore also with architecture and urban planning. The orders that unite both the works and the themes of the works are reduction, asceticism and repetition.