I repeat them to reach them

I repeat them to reach them

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I repeat them to reach them Opening of the exhibition: 26 Feb 2009 Muzeum Sztuki Łódź, 36 Więckowskiego St., 2nd floor Curators: Elżbieta Jabłońska, Maria Morzuch On reopening the ms, the well-known historical seat of the Muzeum Sztuki, we invite the audience to the 2nd floor to the famous Neo-Plastic Room designed by Władysław Strzemiński.

Artist and performer Elżbieta Jabłońska invites the viewers to visit the new exhibition and to attend in an unconventional way the events that accompany it. The audience will be able to view selected photographs from the museum collection, watch films and explore the designer’s archives of the Neo-Plastic Room.

Leaving children to freely express themselves through playing, the adults are welcome to contribute to the shape of the biggest exhibition space. They will be encouraged to create, by means of several movable elements, their own art arrangements, deciding upon the idea, choice and method – to finally claim the authorship. The objective is not to satisfy the curator’s curiosity about the unexpected outcome of the audience’s actions, but to swap roles with them radically: to assume the right to ask questions, gain distance and express doubts, i.e. the right that usually remains within the scope of the viewer’s judgment.

The painting emblematic of the exhibition communicates the same idea: I Confuse Stażewski Strzemiński by Paweł Susid expresses the sense of bewilderment so familiar to museum goers.

By executing several versions of the same composition, repeating errors and multiplying doubts, the artist has exchanged his own perspective with the viewer’s. This perplexity refers his work to the problems of contemporary art.

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Set against its primary function defined by Strzemiński (to provide space for sculptures and paintings) and against its current perception as an independent work of art, the Neo-Plastic Room redefined by Jabłońska has become an interior, the story of whose historical predecessors is narrated by photographs and films. Jabłońska poses a series of questions: What is the meaning of the room devoid of its exhibits? What is the Modern Art Collection without the Neo-Plastic Room? Where are the limits of the museum authority to move a work of art from one space to another?

Quoting the poet Julian Przyboś ”I repeat them to reach them” Jabłońska presents art in its everyday peregrination between the artist’s studio and the museum storeroom. A work of art – a wrapped object on a shelf, or a painting hung on a net, subject to photographing and filming, described and filed in the inventory and the catalogue – for a long time remains hidden from the viewer’s eyes. It is exactly this covert state of existence of the artwork submitted to various procedures that Jabłońska has chosen to focus on in her installation. The interaction between the work’s transformations in an atelier and its stasis in a storeroom spurs the question about the identity of art being re-exhibited several years after it was created. And yet another question arises: What changes should be introduced in the surroundings of a work of art so that it can function again, triggering emotions?

Maria Morzuch

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Muzeum Sztuki Łódź Więckowskiego 36 / 2nd floor 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 Round the Idea of the Neo-Plastic Room On creating the Neo-Plastic Room, Władysław Strzemiński designed the space as autonomous and utilitarian in character. Its autonomy allows the viewer to enter the room as a three-dimensional painting whose colour fields are placed around him on the walls and the ceiling. The utilitarian purpose of the room was to exhibit works of art. The act of removing the works out of this exceptional space has shifted the focus from the exhibits onto the space, which has become an object in itself. The diminished colour models offer the viewer a chance to get involved.

7 I Confuse Stażewski Strzemiński 8 The Artist’s Studio 9 / 10 Sculpture Storeroom / Painting Storeroom A storeroom simulation allows the viewer to enter the normally inaccessible mode of the artwork’s existence

11 Photography Storeroom Photography and museum inventory entry as an attempt at mediating between the image and the language

12 Functional Print 13 Portrait Collection 14 Registration of Cezary Bodzianowski’s Oxy Man event 15 Cinema Auditorium MS / IRTTRT / 5

Władysław Strzemiński, Neo-Plastic Room, 1948–1960 (maquette) MS / IRTTRT / 6

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Photography and Visual Technique Department

Series „Kazimierz nad Wisłą 1931–32” Wandering Circus II /2/

Benedykt Jerzy DORYS b. 1901–1990

MS/SN/FT/F/32/2 26.10.1977

MS/KW/215/7/1-11 Negative 1931–32 Positive 1960 photo paper, photograph 28,3 x 38,8

Signed: Dorys Reverse: „Kazimierz nad Wisłą 1931–32” 60. Wandering circus II MS/KZ/2095 Positive 1960 Author’s stamp: B. J. Dorys Artist Photographer Warsaw, Nowy Świat 29, copyright A photograph made inside of the circus presents a fragment of a tent against which a figure shadow on the trapeze is visible. Ropes, on which the canvas is spread, create an arrangement of geometric planes on the entire surface.

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Polska

Photography and Visual Technique Department

“Saint Nenalia pray for us old sinners!”

Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz

1931

Zakopane, Polska

MS/SN/F/1461 28.02.1985

MS/KW/90/85

black & white photograph 11,9 x 7,2

A photograph reproduction with painted decorative elements stylized on “sacred picture” and inscription at the bottom: “Saint Nenalia pray for us old sinners!”.

A fragment of the photograph of Nena Stachurski was used – Trip to Czorsztyn St. I. Witkiewicz, Nena Stachurska.

On the reverse, sections like on a postcard.

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Photography and Visual Technique Department

Series „Caps” /Card II/

Ireneusz PIERZGALSKI b. 1929

MS/FT/F/51/2 13.12.1977

MS/KW/282/77

1975–76

Polska – Łódź

photo paper, photograph /on cardboard/ 100 x 70 Unsigned.

On the reverse: a proprietary card of the Muzeum Sztuki.

On the board / on the top / four portraits of persons from the author’s circle. Everybody dressed in the same jacket and cap.

Below private pictures of the portrayed persons.

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Jerzy Lewczyński, Nysa – Our Enlargement 1945, 1971 MS / IRTTRT / 11

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Paweł Susid, I Confuse Stażewski Strzemiński, 1998 From the collection of Zachęta Sztuki Współczesnej, Szczecin MS / IRTTRT / 13

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Muzeum Sztuki Łódź Więckowskiego 36, 90-734 Łódź tel. 042 633 82 73, fax 042 632 99 41 www.msl.org.pl muzeum@msl.org.pl Director Jarosław Suchan I Repeat Them to Reach Them 26.02. – 31.12.2009 Curators of the exhibition Elżbieta Jabłońska, Maria Morzuch Coordination Barbara Włodarczyk Translation Joanna Kruczkowska, Barbara Włodarczyk Photographs Egon Fietke, Piotr Tomczyk Design and typesetting Jakub Stępień / HAKOBO.ART.PL Realisation Stämpfli Polska Sp. z o. o. © Muzeum Sztuki and Authors, 2009 ISBN 978-83-87937-62-1

On the left: Painting storeroom Muzeum Sztuki Łódź MS / IRTTRT / 15

Cover: Władysław Strzemiński, Fabric design, 1948 (fragment) Courtesy of Centralne Muzeum Włókiennictwa, Łódź

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