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14 May – 25 October 2026 The Xawery Dunikowski Museum of Sculpture in Królikarnia
Discover art in the Sculpture Park at Królikarnia through a performative tour. Reserve your place for a unique experience!
Discover art in the Sculpture Park at Królikarnia through a performative tour. Reserve your place for a unique experience!
22.11.2015 - 20.03.2016
Opening: 22.11 (Sunday) at 6 p.m.
How Xawery Dunikowski Sculpture Museum in Królikarnia celebrates the 50th anniversary of its existence? Not with banquets and honors but with intensified research work and by organising exhibitions on the history of the collection and the building of the museum, as well as inviting Zbigniew Libera, one of the greatest and most radical contemporary artists, to choose the most interesting works from the museum’s collection and to present them at the jubilee exhibition.
Zbigniew Libera did not only make an intriguing selection of sculptures and objects belonging to a huge collection, but also added his own commentaries in the form of drawings and photographs made especially for the exhibition. Large-format photographs and drawings in A1 format in pencil and crayon together with sculptures and spatial objects make very attractive visual whole. The works of key Polish artists, including Xawery Dunikowski, Katarzyna Kobro, Henryk Stażewski Alina Szapocznikow or Hasior were juxtaposed with projects by almost forgotten artists such as Theodore Roszak or Albin Maria Bończa-Boniecki. New unexpected sculptures configurations arise association with the famous Atlas Mnemosyne (1924-1929) by Aby Warburg. The huge visual material composed by the German researcher in anachronistic constellations on dozens of panels still shows the inspiring explosive force as an epistemological model nullifying a clear line between scientific and artistic activities.
A fragment of the museum’s collection in conjunction with sheets filled with drawings made, among others, on the basis of photographs from the press, catalogs and albums creates a kind of unique "Atlas of sculptures" by Zbigniew Libera, or rather "Atlas of ideas". Wandering from the central rotunda through succesive rooms, we follow the trail of associations and visual rebuses relating to, among others, to biographies of artists, entanglements and interdependencies of worlds of art, media and politics. The sheet entitled "The French Connection" in conjunction with Alina Szapocznikow, Alina Ślesińska and Maria Papa Rostkowska sculptures evokes connotations associated with pre- and post-war migration of Polish artists. In the hall, "Henry Wiciński and Jaremas clan " are not only the works of avant-garde artists of the Krakow Group, but also the nude of a young man by Alfons Karny surrounded by the magnificent statues depicting dominant women, made in the 30s of the twentieth century by Xawery Dunikowski. Friendship, love, mutual inspiration and interdependency of the artists, their social conditions - are another fascinating clues planted for the viewers as they walk through the exhibition.
But who hunted who during Libera’s long treks through museum’s repositories: Libera the sculptures or sculptures Libera? In the words of the artist himself "objects are trying to catch us for an eye, and rays of their flashes are hooks that we are trapped in". And also: "we never focus on something that is not connected in some way with our own desires and actions". These findings fit with the psychoanalytic look theory of Jacques Lacan. According to the famous French scientist the objects look at us with the light they send in our direction and their looks constitute us as subjects captured in the images forming in this way.
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Curator: Joanna Turowicz
Sketches, photographs and poster: Zbigniew Libera
Architectural: Agnieszka Tarasiuk
Graphic design: Full Metal Jacket
Media Partners: Gazeta Co Jest Grane, Gazeta Wyborcza, TVP Kultura, Trójka - Program 3 Polskiego Radia
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