KunstHalle Deutsche Bank

artists taking part in the exhibition:Paweł Althamer, The Supergroup Azorro, Tymek Borowski, Karolina Breguła, Elżbieta Jabłońska, Rafał Jakubowicz, Łukasz Jastrubczak, Anna Molska, Anna Okrasko, Agnieszka Polska & Witek Orski, Karol Radziszewski, Janek Simon, Konrad Smoleński, Monika Sosnowska, Iza Tarasewicz, Piotr Wysocki
curators: Julia Kurz, Stanisław Welbel
organisers: Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, the Polish Institute in Berlin, Zachęta — National Gallery of Art
locations: Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, Polish Institute in Berlin

COMMON AFFAIRS is an exhibition of Polish artists selected from amongst those who have been finalists in the VIEWS competition. This award for the best young artists, initiated in 2003 by two institutions: Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, whose mission is the popularization of contemporary art, and Deutsche Bank – which for many years has declared the promotion of art and an interest in contemporaneity amongst its activities – is the most important distinction awarded in the field of the visual arts in Poland.

Two curators from the two countries – Stanisław Welbel from Poland and Julia Kurz from Germany – through the cooperation between them, and also through a dialogue with artists, have sought an answer to this question: what today constitutes freedom and the exchange of ideas in a situation in which art is financed by both public and private funds? The exhibition – shown on the premises of the DB Kunsthalle in Berlin and the Polish Institute in Berlin – thus comes to form something of a platform for a range of artistic statements.

The invited artists often refer in their works to history – evoking both events and historical and social processes (industrialization, wars, transformations, changes in political system). Another significant issue around which the exhibition is concentrated is an engagement with the field of the mediation, production and distribution of art – it undertakes a diagnosis of the conditions currently dominant in cultural institutions and of the hierarchies existent in the world of art. Art here is a kind of seismography collating the repercussions and tensions of history, the present and the future; artists and their works dialogue with reality and reclaim their right to have a voice in important questions.

Some of the works have been made especially with a view to this presentation and will have their premieres in Berlin (Iza Tarasewicz, Janek Simon, Łukasz Jastrubczak); others will directly make reference to and dialogue with works shown previously in Zachęta in the frame of the Views competition (Rafał Jakubowicz, Anna Okrasko, Paweł Althamer); while older works – in a changed context – acquire new interpretations and accumulate new layers of meaning (Elżbieta Jabłońska, Karol Radziszewski, Anna Molska, the Supergroup Azorro).

The discussions and also, at the express wish of the curators, the negotiations involved have been inscribed in the process of creating the exhibition and the publication accompanying it. Here many divergent voices ring out: questions are posed and propositions for answers suggested, opinions are given and judgements made. Some of the conclusions are surprising, but the polyphony of voices deserve to be considered even in their most unexpected points of view or opinions – sometimes these are not easy to accept, but in their form nonetheless remain universal.

The title COMMON AFFAIRS has a double meaning: both collective or joint affairs, and ones that are everyday or routine. The exhibition also has a subtitle: REVISITING THE VIEWS AWARD — CONTEMPORARY ART FROM POLAND. It also takes place at the time of the celebration of the 25^th anniversary of the signing of the “Polish-German Treaty of Good Neighbourhood and Friendly Cooperation”. But the decision to organize the exhibition was not connected with the promotion of any particular institution, nor with the celebration of the award itself or even the honouring of political differences. It emerges rather from the shared conviction that Polish art is important and worth attention. Contemporary artists have something important to say: here and now. To the public, to the organisers and also to the curators, to critics and to each other.