Schism: Polish Art of the 1990s

Schism - the exhibition's title refers to a memorable booklet of poems by Marcin Swietlicki that highlights the difference and line dividing the People's Republic of Poland and the current Third Republic of Poland. In Poland, the 1990s were time of revaluation and forging of a new definition of a work of art, artist and art institutions, creation of a new language of art criticism, a fulcrum for the tension between artist and society, appearance of curators, and propagation of the "problem exhibition" medium. The art of the 90s originates in Polish art of the preceding decades and, like many of the active artists during that time, has its pedigree in the People's Republic of Poland, though it is also an attempt to move away from, or even break with, the previously dominant attitudes, styles and forms of artistic activity. 

The first part of Schism is a revisionist presentation of selected works of art from the CCA International Contemporary Art Collection spanning the last 20 years (from Zbigniew Libera, Katarzyna Kozyra and Artur Zmijewski, Zygmunt Rytka, Jerzy Truszkowski, Zofia Kulik, to Pawel Althamer, Marek Kijewski, and Miroslaw Balka), which constitutes a significant point of reference for the artistic community, critics and curators by initiating a debate over the meaning of contemporary art in the coalescing civil society of a country undergoing systemic transformation. Time has shown that the CCA Ujazdowski Castle program provided an original offer and brought art into the new realities of the democratic Republic of Poland. 

The second part of Schism presents source materials concerning activities of the Ujazdowski Castle in 1989-1999, focusing on extensively commented events from the CCA program, exhibitions such as Paradise Lost, Magicians and Mystics, Bakunin in Dresden, Ideas Beyond Ideology, Antibodies, Image Borders, and At This Particular Time. Archived materials shown in the space symbolically abandoned by the collection supplement interviews with CCA curators. A separate sequence shows films from individual exhibitions, such as those by Jan Swidzinski, Zbigniew Warpechowski, Alicja Zebrowska, Roman Stanczak, and Joanna Rajkowska. A reflection on the CCA program recalls the beginnings of the discussion about the limits of art and context of its functioning in the public sphere. The presentation ends with a fluid transition from institutional policy to aesthetics (Maurycy Gomulicki, Mikolaj Dlugosz, Roman Dziadkiewicz). Nostalgia for the 1990s, visible in music and objects of cult and banality, provides a better image of the now historical dimension of those years. 

Schism is an open research project with an "archaeology of contemporaneity" which includes the collection, classification and a critical review of documents, interviews, and interpretation of works of art from that time.